Shock of the New

On Monday night I stood in what had once been my mother's bedroom and screamed.

Then I went around the house and put signs on things that I didn't want them to take.

The next day was more of the same, with a couple of differences. Taking a lesson from the day before, I tried to spend more of my time in the house, keeping an eye on the pickers. This sometimes involved having to be in more than one place at the same time. I began to be more assertive and proactive, trying to define some boundaries. After talking to Sue C_______, I decided to keep the dining room table and a set of chairs to go around it. I decided to keep the apothecary chest, as much so that I wouldn't have to open and go through all the drawers as for its usefulness as a piece of furniture.

Other than that, it was very much like the day before. Panic, work, running around, pictures and tears.

Sue helped me sort through some personal papers and clothes. She left around 3:30, and I thought, it's just me and them, now.

About half an hour later, my father appeared in the yard. I went up to him and said, "I didn't expect to see you today."

He said, "M_____ and I are going to take you to dinner."

It was a nice thought, but not what I needed or wanted. I needed the evening hours to start cleaning up the disaster area that was my house and to start making the place habitable again. I didn't want to leave my kitties alone when they would no doubt be freaking out. But this was not so much an invitation as another one of his non-negotiable demands.

Once again Whitey and Honey had gone into hiding under my bed and had to be coaxed out. Once again Honey went tearing down the stairs, but this time she did not even make it to the bottom. The front hall had been cleared out. She saw the empty space, spun around 180 degrees and shot past me into the dark hall that leads to the guest room. I called her and called her, but she would not show herself.

My father was saying that we had to go. I just had time to quickly get some fresh food out for the gang, and no time to change or clean up. My pants were covered with filth.

I said I'd follow them in my car. My father's wife said, in her heavily accented, sing-song voice, "No, we drive you."

I sat in the back seat of their SUV with my head against the glass, staring blindly through the window and not saying much of anything. They noted a new building that had gone in on the main road. Without knowing why I said it, I said, "There are a couple of nice houses for sale in W_________ with screened porches on them."

My father said, "That's what you said in your email last night." (I didn't remember typing it, or even sending him an email the night before, I had been in a zombie-like state,) Then he said, "Let's go look at them. You show me where they are and we'll take a look."

My heart sank. I thought, Oh, me and my damn mouth again. Now this is going to take even longer.

When we got to town I directed them onto C___ Street and then W______ Avenue. At the very end of C___ Street there is a house for sale with a finished apartment above the garage. Just around the corner there is a nice looking Victorian with a sign out front reading "FOR SALE BY OWNER." My father actually stopped the car, and his wife wrote down the number. I thought, What is going on here?

We drove up the avenue to a brown shingled house that I pass every day. They wrote down the name and number of the real estate broker.

At the restaurant, my father took out a real estate magazine that he had brought with him and began leafing through it. It was only then that I realized that my off-hand comment in the car had played right in to the subject that they wanted to speak to me about.

They are going to help me buy a house.

They leave for Nevada in late October, and want it done before then.

The Corpse Pickers

It was a bit of black humor on Monday morning to go to my Halloween countdown calendar and discover that the picture for that day was a witch's broom, sweeping stars.

I rose early, did my morning chores as normal, and at about 8:30 started rounding up cats.

Honey and Pooky went into the bathroom, Patches, Pandy Bear and Whitey went into my bedroom. Patches was the only one who resisted, but the minute I closed the door on them they realized that something was not right. As I popped each succeeding cat into the room, it got harder and harder to keep them inside while I shut the door.

I went out and sat at the table sipping on my ginger ale, waiting for them to come.

Sue C_______ was the first. She is the paralegal who works with my lawyer, and was there for moral and practical support. Then Mr. J_____ himself arrived. The head honcho. He likes to hear himself talk and immediately took command of the conversation with stories from his life.and profession. It went on for what seemed like a long time before the trucks began to pull in.

We stood at the back door and Mr. J______ made a discreet speech about my mother and about the task that his staff faced and how they were going to go about it. He had to keep starting over again because more people kept arriving, including my father and my lawyer, Joanne A_____, who as always gave me a big hug. I'm certain that I looked like I needed it.

From the bathroom window upstairs I could hear Pooky wailing. I had expected to see Honey sitting in that window, as it's one of her favorite spots, but she never appeared.

Then the show began. On that first day, it was my mistake to position myself in the yard to watch the things being carried out of the house. When the first item came out of the door I burst into tears and had to hide.

It started as a trickle and turned into a flood. Things were coming out so fast that I couldn't keep track. Soon I realized that they weren't just taking things of value -- they were taking everything.

They took her telephone. I caught this and saved it. They took her Dustbuster. They took her bag full of prosthetic socks. They took electric fans. I had told all of them that I still lived in the house and hoped they would leave me with some furniture and other practical things; either they didn't listen to me, or they had been told to clear the place out to the bare walls.

They took our broom. Why? They took my hammer. Why? I began prowling the yard, which with its tables full of things and boxes on the ground was beginning to look like a flea market, trying to find things and rescue them.

Inside the house was chaos. They toy man, Andrew, was ripping things down so carelessly that other objects were falling to the floor, where they broke or were stepped upon. He would pull things out of the arrangements, and if he decided not to take it he would toss it aside carelessly. Dolls lost their hats, arms, legs. Sets were broken up. It seemed to me that they didn't even know what they were looking at.

The rugs were all tossed out and the dirt underneath them began to spread absolutely everywhere. If it was clean when they started, it was filthy when they left.

I felt so powerless and every so often broke down in tears again.

Mr. J_____ was personally sorting every item that came out of the house, first deciding if he was going to take the item, or pass it off to his brother-in-law's auction house, then sorting what he wanted into groups.

Sue kept on trying to impress on me that as executor, I had the power to keep anything I wanted, but the message was largely not sinking in. I was too distracted and distraught.

Around noon I went upstairs to switch out Honey and Patchy. I first I couldn't find Honey at all, and thought, how could she disappear? It turned out that she was cowering in the bathtub, trying to make herself as small as possible. She looked up wt me with a terrified expression. I was going to switch out Whitey as well, so that he could get access the cat tray, but as soon as I closed the door on him he began wailing. I put him back in my room.

Throughout the afternoon it was more of the same. One half of the crew ripped things out of the kitchen and then moved into the dining and living room; the other half started in the hall and worked their way into my mother's bedroom.

They took the things that she had made even though I had asked them not to. So again I had to be on my toes, going from bin to bin, trying to save pieces of her from going.

And so on, as Mr. Vonnegut says.

They stopped taking things out of the house at four-thirty, and concentrated on processing what was already out. I went up and let the cats out.

Honey came out of the room and went shooting down the stairs like a rocket into the front of the house. Pandy Bear and Patchy were completely mellow. But Whitey was hiding under my bed and afraid to come out.

As I carried their food plates to the kitchen, I met Honey coming back. She was running at top speed through the half-stripped living room, keeping low to the ground as though she was trying to hide and run at the same time. When she saw me she stopped dead in her tracks and looked up at me with her eyes as big as saucers, as if to say, "What have YOU DONE??!!"

What, indeed, had I done? Something horrible, that I could never change.

What do you do at the end of the world?

The pictures say it all, really.

Before this week, the worst thing I've ever had to do is hold Sandy (a Palomino) and Pony while the vet put them down.

I'm not saying that this week was worse than that; but it's in that league.

I don't even know where to start. Likely it will take multiple posts to tell the story.

On Sunday I did a few last-minute things to get ready for the next day. I washed rugs and put clean ones down (this was a waste of time, as it turns out). I mowed the lawn. And in the evening, last thing before bed, I took the last few things out of my mother's room that I couldn't bear to part with: the big sock monkey, an animation cell from the Mickey Mouse cartoon Nifty Nineties, a page of original Bonzo Dog art by Geo. Studdy, the original art for a daily Mickey Mouse comic strip, a book of Sock Monkey photos that I bought for her at Christmas of last year, the talking Mickey Mouse advent calendar, and some very neat unisex shirts that I can wear.

It sounds like a lot, but as you can see from the "Before" photo, there was so much in the room that nobody would be the wiser.

I stowed these last items in my walk-in closet, and set a chair in front of it to indicate that it was off limits.

Of  course I'd been crying all day, and it wasn't the dignified kind of weeping, either. When I woke up that morning, Honey and Pandy Bear were both with me. I said to them, "This is the last day of the Universe as we know it, guys."

Of course they didn't understand. They would have to learn it the hard way.

That's the way to do it...

Monday morning around ten, and for at least two days afterward, the auction house will be at my home taking it all down. I know that during the day, my concern will not be about grief management, but on the logistics of six or more people all coming and going from the house through at least two entrances.

Their plan is to set up tables in the front yard (for this reason I have been unable to put out Halloween decorations). Two people will come into the house and start picking. Two people will act as runners, carrying the items out of the house to the two people manning the tables. These last will sort the items into lots, then pack and load everything onto the truck.

I've been trying to get the house ready for them, emptying drawers and more, but many of the desks and dressers and closets are actually inaccessible to me, which means that this will be an ongoing job. Also, I have no room to store anything that comes out of these places -- I will have to deal with it as space gradually opens up.

I have had to make plans of my own. Wanting not to worry all day about the cats getting out, I decided to lock them in my rooms upstairs, two in the bathroom and three in my bedroom, being mindful of matching the personalities to avoid cat warfare. I may have to switch them out a couple of times, as I'm not about to put a cat tray in my bedroom -- that's an idea I do NOT want to put into their heads! Likewise, Pooky will have to stay in the bathroom all day. I am not having her poop all over my sheets!

I plan on taking a lot of pictures. That's probably the best thing about digital cameras -- you don't have to worry about wasting film.

I know that it will be a long, busy day, and that I most likely will not have time to think much about what's happening. My father has said that he's going to be there for moral support; if he stays true to form, he will actually try to take over and run the operation. Then it will be my job to channel him in some other direction. That's all right. One more distraction for me.

My biggest fear is that my sister will find out what's happening and try to disrupt the process. I know that she wanted to lay claim to certain items, and until I found out that she was stealing from the house I would not have stood in the way of this. But things are different now. My position is that she made her choices and took them. She doesn't get to pick any more. She gave up that right. If she complains, I will happily tell her, "You're perfectly free to bid on things."

I had to swear my father to secrecy on the dates before I would tell him anything. I believe Monday will be safe. But her husband will be at home and he frequently drives down my road, and I fear that he or one of the kids will find out what's happening and convey the news to Claudia. This could make Tuesday or Wednesday a little sticky. If she turns up, I will ask her as politely as possible to leave. If she doesn't, I will call the state police.

At the end of the day, everyone will go away, and I will be left alone with the cats to clean up and deal with what remains. That's when I expect the tears to come.

An oldie but not a goodie

1942's Night Monster from Universal Studios commits the one deadly sin that no movie of its type can afford: it is dead boring! It's got a great cast and the usual state-of-the-art in creepy sets and design, but the problem can be summed up in one credit: "Produced and Directed by Ford Beebe."

Beebe was at best a journeyman B-movie director, professional but uninspired. Of the three Flash Gordon serials, Beebe directed the second, Flash Gordon's Trip to Mars, and it's the worst of the lot.

In Night Monster, he directs as if he's deliberately trying to make the most un-thrilling thriller of all time. Now, perhaps he had the Hayes office looking over his shoulder; in that case, I'm being (slightly) unfair. But, for goodness sake, until the final scene absolutely everything that's even remotely scary happens off-screen, sometimes with the characters pointing to it and hollering "Look!"

I wish that I could! It's true that you don't want to show the monster in detail right up front and spoil your whole game, but in this thing all you ever see is people looking at the ground and saying, "Look at the size of that footprint!"

Bela Lugosi gets top billing for playing a butler, and not even a very sinister one at that. Irene Hervey, way ahead of her time, plays a lady psychologist, but is really just so much window-dressing. Ralph Morgan has the juicy part, or the part that would have been juicy with a more flamboyant director, and he does his best -- but the man isn't allowed even a single close-up!


It took me two nights to get through this thing because I kept falling asleep on it! If only they could bottle it, it would be a great alternative to Sominex. The best and funniest line in the picture comes at the very end, but you'll most likely miss it.

In other pop-culturey activities, I have finally duped every serial in my collection from VHS onto DVD. Towards the end I was getting into some pretty weak stuff, including G-Men Vs. The Black Dragon, a wartime story with Rod Cameron in the lead, and, most laughably, somebody named Nino Pipitone as Haruchi, the leader of a Japanese spy ring. Have you ever heard someone with a heavy Italian accent try to put on a fake Japanese accent? It's quite chucklesome.

-- Freder.

"Many strange things can be seen."

My mother loved all holidays. Whenever the holiday "merch" hit the stores, she was at her happiest. If she saw something cute, it came home with her. The seeing and the action were one and the same. This is why her house is filled with, among many other things, vintage Santa Clauses, bunny rabbits, and, yes, pumphinheads.

As for me, I pretty much only like Halloween. This was the one time of year where I actually enjoyed the annual unveilings in the stores as much as she did, and we both had a lot of fun together on our weekly errands day.

So I was concerned how I would react when the season rolled around and the ghouls and goblins started coming out.

For one thing, I have a hard time accepting the fact that it's already October! It's true that, in the words of Bill Watterson, a year passes like nothing,  and that nothing in the first twenty years of your life prepares you for how quickly the next thirty go by. But the events of this year have been uniquely disorienting. Part of that was my fault.

And as I mentioned in the previous post, when Mr. Death comes knocking and takes someone close to you, the impact can be enough to turn the most hardened Halloween zealots into turncoats.

But the widely accepted perception that Halloween is a holiday about Death has never rung true to me. It wears the trappings of death in the same way that a person puts on a costume, but Halloween is really a holiday about Change.

Looking at it that way, getting out my Halloween stuff and wearing my Halloween ties and shirts and seeing the jack o' lanterns and ghosts and witches and black cats come out in the stores has been more oddly comforting than disturbing. Because Halloween was something we enjoyed together, and because Change has become the overriding theme of this awful year, thinking about Halloween and seeing it has made me feel more wistful than melancholic.

The first real test was the Jo-Ann fabrics store. They always get their holiday items out before anyone else, and one day while doing my weekly shopping at the supermarket, I could see through the display window that Halloween was Up.

I debated about even going in. For about two seconds.

It was noticeably less fun without someone else to compare notes with or point things out to, and a couple of times I found myself saying to my mother, "I wish you were here." But, more than that, I still enjoyed the jolly designs and decorations that they had come up with. I left the store without buying anything, feeling somewhere in the middle realm and wondering about that.

The next time I found a store setting up their Halloween I went in eagerly. I didn't think about whether of not Mom would have loved what she saw. I actually bought a simple yard ornament and put it up that same night. It's something we always did together.

-- Freder.

Now entering The October Country

Ray Bradbury is a preacher who lost his faith. A lifelong fan of all things Halloween, Bradbury threw all his pumpkins out into the street when his friend Frederico Fellini died on Halloween day.

Although it's not as fun as it used to be (more on that subject in a later post), I am determined not to suffer the same loss. Every year when October first rolls around, I drop whatever I'm watching and reading and switch to all-spooky fare. This year I am not making an exception. Time to revisit my old friends The Addams Family, Carl Kolchak, Mulder and Scully, and Mr. Serling's Night Gallery.

Time also to break out the new selection of Universal horror movies that arrived a few weeks ago. I bought it to replace my VHS copy of Man Made Monster with Lon Chaney Jr., and for under fifteen bucks I got four other pictures that I'd never seen before.

These are the kind of horror movies I like: atmospheric, moody, with monsters that are more intellectually gruesome than viscerally so. You might as well know that I have deep moral objections to the kind of horror movies they make today, and am appalled that the kind of torture porn that used to be confined to dingy theaters on sidestreets is now commonly available in our suburban cinematechs and our "friendly neighborhood" Wal-Marts. There's something wrong when the DVD aisles of department stores are weltering in gore -- and you know that Wal Mart isn't being particular about who they sell to.

The kind of zombies I like are the kind in Val Lewton's I Walked With a Zombie. For what George Romero did to the culture, I think he should be locked in jail.

The most recent horror movie that I'll watch is Ridley Scott's original Alien. And I prefer to go back much further than that.

This past weekend I visited 1941 twice, first with the aforementioned Man Made Monster. It has all the elements. Chaney plays a sympathetic but simple-minded circus performer who, after surviving a freak electrical accident, is taken in for experimentation by a kindly doctor and his not-so-kindly assistant, well played by Lionel Atwill (I'm hearing whispers that Atwill was kind of a pervert in real life, which lends a layer of squirminess to his work). Soon Chaney is lumbering around in a rubber electrical suit, glowing with electricity, fatal to the touch. Considering the ultra-low budget, even by Universal standards, this is wonderfully atmospheric and ends in tragedy with Chaney's life literally running out on a line.

And on Sunday I braved The Black Cat -- not a remake of the 1934 classic starring Karloff and Lugosi, but a kind of misbegotten "old house" murder mystery with comedic overtones. Bela is in this one, too -- but he has maybe two lines of dialogue and spends most of the picture lurking about, looking through windows. At first the plot was difficult for me, as it concerned a crippled old lady in a big old house full of antiques and cats; pretty much my mother's situation! But then the murders start and everyone begins to act suspiciously, and the secret passages begin to get used with wild abandon. Broderick Crawford is completely miscast as the male lead, but he does try hard. And then there's Hugh Herbert: a very amusing guy and great fun to watch, but what in heck is he doing in this movie?

There are some good moments and as usual the picture looks great; but a lot of the scary stuff is funny and a lot of the funny stuff isn't. By no means is this in the league of The Ghost Breakers (with Bob Hope and Paulette Goddard) or Abbott and Costello Meet Frankenstein -- both of which got the Horror Comedy recipe just exactly right.

For more monster-movie blather from me, just stay tuned. And you can read my essay on Halloween Favorites here at The October Country.

-- Freder.

Message from me to God: "Will you knock it off already, you SON OF A BITCH?"

Junior is missing for five days. He's never been gone this long before. He is my favorite of the outdoors cats, the sweetest, friendliest "feral" cat we had.

Now the only ones left are Tiger Grumpyface (who won't let me near her) and Tiger Whitestockings, who clearly misses Junior -- she looks at me from out of the bushes and cries and cries.

If that wasn't enough, a big section of my barn roof fell in this week, probably during the first stage of the typhoon that blew through here over the last few days.

And as if that wasn't enough, it rained so hard yesterday that the roof of my house couldn't take it -- I had significant water dripping through into the front room. Couldn't even get in there to put buckets or pans down to catch it, because of the big doll's house and the other stuff that occupies that area.

I am SICK of this shit!

I take it all as a very unsubtle series of signs that it's time to get out of that place and start a new life elsewhere. 

'Nuff said!