12th Street

I'm looking out my window. I'm on the second story and have a roof-level view of a little square of 12th Street. The house directly across from me used to be the Slineys'. We didn't know the Slineys well, but one day, soon after we started the big renovations on our house, there was a knock on the door, and it was Mrs. Sliney. She had two photos with her that showed our house on the bed of a truck being moved here. The pictures are printed with "April 1959" on them, and she said she thought we'd enjoy having them. They were priceless, unexpected gifts that now form the frontispiece of the photo album we made to document the changes we made to the house over the years.

The house next to the Slineys, with the big dormer roof built across the top, was the Burtons'. "Burt" is a retired Marine, gentle and very quiet; Elizabeth was the neighborhood "historian" (less charitable tongues termed her a gossip). On summer evenings they would pull metal lawn chairs out to their driveway and watch the world go by. Sometimes they'd invite us over, and that was a treat, because Elizabeth would tell stories about the neighbors. You felt kind of funny, lapping up all this juicy dirt, and you definitely didn't want to let her get to know you well enough to become part of her repertoire. But you sure learned a lot.

On the other side of the Slineys, visible to me if I lean to my right a bit, lived divorcee Gerri Watson, and directly across from Gerri, next door to us, was widow Cici Barr, a tiny, sweet lady from Colombia who married a WW II vet and settled here. Gerri was the wild one. By day she was a buttoned-down accountant in A-line skirts and harlequin glasses. But by night she liked to par-tay!! In our first years here, we used to throw major Christmas bashes with some hundred or so people sardined into this place. We used the usual ploy of inviting all the neighbors, reasoning they couldn't complain about noise if they were invited to make some of it. Gerri and Cici always showed up, and always first. Gerri was a vision in the same dress every year, a floor-length taffeta number that looked like it had been stashed away since her 1950s prom. Her brown wig was teased so high she had to look out for our ceiling fans. And the look was always completed by those harlequin glasses. Cici, of course, was along for the ride but sort of faded into the woodwork next to Gerri. As they arrived at the first party and we led them to the bar, Gerri made no bones about informing us that they were "here to meet men!" Knowing the mostly lavender, or already-spoken-for, complexion of the crowd that was on its way, we just wished them happy hunting and moved on. As the party got going, who was after what ceased to matter. Gerri danced up a storm with any human on two legs, harlequin frames and towering wig more and more aslant, at opposing angles. (Sadly, Gerri and Cici had a falling out in a few years--we never knew about what--and they stopped speaking. Gerri also stopped speaking to us, too, we think because of the sometimes boistrous Friday happy hours we started having on our new front porch. She was never specifically invited, but nobody was. It was a happy hour--just show up if you want to. But Gerri chose to take a negative view. Her loss. She'd have been welcomed with open arms if she had just come over.)

We soon learned that Gerri didn't limit her prowling just to our parties. One summer on a late Saturday night as we were driving home from somewhere, we spied Gerri walking to her house, barefoot, in her yellow shortie pajamas, a satchel of beer under her arm. She was coming from the Burtons'. We never knew how long the flame had burned between her and Burt, but apparently it grew from pilot maintenance to sear after Elizabeth went to her reward.

All of those people, original settlers in our neighborhood, are gone now. Burt got too frail to keep up his meticulous landscaping and moved in with his son; his wife Elizabeth, the Slineys, Gerri and Cici have all passed on. The Burtons' house and Gerri's are now rentals housing crowds of young singles who have their own parties--they've never invited us. The neighborhood still looks the same, but the feeling is different. We were once the hot new blood on the street; now we're just settled fogies who worry about real estate values.

The current talk in the air about change is nothing to new to us. We've been talking about it for a few years now, and it has nothing to do with politics. We are ready to turn a new page in our own lives, ready to be the new guys on the street again, in the new house. And so help us, it'll happen.