not-so-sticky

"Dear Mom, I took 3 rides on these things across San Fran. today. Wooden seats. ALCATRAZ IS IN BACKGROUND. Love, Bob" Postmarked: San Francisco, California, May 22, 11 PM, 1959. Postage: 3 cents Liberty - In God We Trust purple-colored stamp Addressed to: Mrs. Ivy R. Brown From: Robert Allen Brown

Another fine specimen of a Bob box. This Pabst Blue Ribbon box recently found its way to me from my stepmother's basement. Its contents are mysterious: loose diodes and transistors, carefully wrapped in socks and rubber bands, several books on Calculus, a slide rule, and a half dozen of empty pill bottles with their labels ripped off. Ingrained in my memory, this solidly-constructed box has carried varying possessions of Bob's since the 1970s!

Between 1974, when I was born, and 1992, when I graduated from high school, I lived in, at least, 20 different houses. Though we resided, for the most part, in Columbia County , so that I could remain in the same school through graduation, continuity where it counts being of importance to my father, we often relocated to different rentals in the area. Whenever we moved into a new house, Bob would initially discuss decorating the house but it rarely moved past the theoretical. The boxes containing our belongings would often double as our furniture. Several stacked Xerox boxes would become the TV stand. Bed sheets tacked up would become our curtains, if there were curtains hung at all. Bob had dreams of me sewing curtains out of burlap , a material he found both sturdy and practical, but my ambition to sew was low, so they never came to fruition. XEROX boxes worked the best. Xerox boxes worked the best, and easy to come by, at the Internal Revenue Service offices in Albany,...

"I like the way Indians dress. They had weird underwear," Lil stated, as she stood there in her own. "Well. They couldn't just go online and shop for underwear; they had to make their own underwear out of the materials they had." What? A time before the Internets...? Lili's eyes were open wide. "But who were the Indians?" "Well, the Indians were the people living here when Christopher Columbus 'discovered' America. They were actually the first ones here." "No, actually, the Indian weren't here first; the dinosaurs were."

Bob in September 2009. My father, who suffers from the late-stages of early-onset Alzheimer's, has not been able to live with me for some time. Simple tasks I once took for granted - like eating, walking, talking - have become real challenges. A man who less than two years ago walked all the way from Kingston to Bloomington, albeit unintentionally, is no longer able to stand unassisted. Only five years ago, he had still regularly rode his bicycle over the New York border from his home in Cambridge, New York to West Arlington, Vermont, which only stopped after he had misplaced several bicycles. Even though Bob's no longer living with me, his presence persists.  Throughout the house, objects seem stranded. His wallet, once full of business cards and cash sits empty and discarded on the top of a shelf in the kitchen, its contents lost and the shell dismissed long ago. Bob's wardrobe. At the end of an upstairs hallway, next to the room where my father slept, is a ...

Postcard of High Museum of Art in Atlanta, Georgia. The year was 1988! My father drove us from Kinderhook , New York to Atlanta, Georgia in his Isuzu Trooper , which lacked both an air conditioner and a radio, for our vacation in which I recall as an ungodly hot summer. It was the summer before my freshman year in high school and the last thing I wanted to do was to ride with my father in a hot car across the country. He wouldn't let me use my Sony Walkman! He wanted a fully functioning co-pilot: awake, alert, and counting mile markers along the Interstate! In the back of the Trooper was Bob's mini-cooler stocked with Bob-delicacies: aerosol cheese , crackers, and soda, lest we become overcome by hunger on the road! We stopped at many rest stops, collecting bundles of tourist brochures and maps . We had quite a collection, which I would peruse through every evening, back in our motel, plotting out the next day. I was in charge of finding coupon deals for the next Econo...

The @Amtrak conductor announced we’re about to arrive at our “final destination.” What could he know..?

"Warm beer, cold food" And they were good.

Art by Lil, Age 5. Lil: "Their world got killed so they're looking for another world." Me: "They look fairly happy for having just lost their world." Lil: "They're on their way to their mother, who has blankets and food..."

#14. My Coffee-Making Robot Friend.

The Christmas tree was picked up from the curb by Sanitation Department today. Liam watched intently from the living room window. “Momma, when we die, do we go in the garbage truck?”

Down and Out in Kingston, New York.

 Authentic + Affordable! How can I deny this authentic Upstate experience? At last, I found a place I can afford to live! I can't afford to buy a real home because I'm in publishing.  This cozy camper is one-of-a-kind! Located beneath the shade of a weeping willow tree, she stays cool all spring, right up to summer! Conveniently located next door to all amenities * , I'm ready to pack it up and move on in! An outdoor refrigeration unit is located conveniently next to exit! ** I'll keep my food cold all winter without the unnecessary expense of electric. Hear that, Niagara Mohawk? ConEd! Central Hudson! Down with the lot of you! A little duct tape will cover up the holes on the windows and doors. Once we get the padlock off the door, it's otherwise in ready to move-in condition .*** You really must see it to believe it! I'll have a housewarming as soon as I'm settled. *2 miles from a public restroom at a full-service gas station. **Ever...

Last night, I found myself planted on the couch in my living room with a gummi worm hanging out of the side of my mouth. I wondered just how long before one of my little hell monkeys would wander by and notice? As a child, I maintained the false belief, as I suspect many children do, that my father was an infallible, rational being. Therefore, everything he said must be universally true and right. Father knows best. Now that I'm a parent, I realize how fallacious this belief was. I'm taller. I pay taxes. I've evolved but I'm still the same weird kid on the inside that I've always been. As I grew older, the world unveiled realities outside of my own microcosm and what this world reflected was that my own was more than a bit askew. My father had a lot of eccentricities that I never thought twice about until many years later. The ride home was quiet and still, highlighted by Bob's humming. It wasn't many years later that I learned 'Starry, Starry N...

My father is 70 years old. What he owns can fit into a small bedroom. There are hundreds of business cards, wrapped up with rubber bands; soaps and shampoos, collected from motels; beer coasters he habitually nabbed from bars; a large Xerox box full of maps; a variety of adhesive he used during his sock-gluing phase, among a variety of other odds and ends that had somehow called to him. In all of these items, I am aware of something intrinsically 'Bob' in all of them. To an outsider, they would signify little. But what stands out the most in this room is an object lately untouched by Bob: a plain hard-covered, black brief case. The brief case that carried back and forth various documents from the Federal building in Albany, the mysterious case I was not to touch on pain of death. I recall it being a source of mystery for me. What could be so very important in that black brief case...? The brief case left me deflated. At the end of the day, is that all there is..? Now here I w...

And clearly, I didn't. When I look back at when my father first moved in with me, I cringe. I expected more from him than he was capable. He had only recently stopped driving (a blog, for another time...). He had been home most of the time alone, sometimes for days, nights, while his partner was away at work. I wonder now what those days and nights passed alone were like for him. At first, I thought he was OK to leave home alone; he simply needed visual cues.   This one served as a reminder to Bob to eat lunch while I was at work. I littered the house with pointers. Nothing fancy. Simply Sharpee-scribbled reminders of who he was,  what to do, and where to go on colored construction paper. Bob's Room.   Bathroom.   STOP! Bob! Stay inside the house!   Attic.   Stupidly, at first, I sometimes left him in the house with notes in 'joke' format, like 'Hey Bob, don't leave the house! The police are looking for you!" which would have been really funny if m...

Sasquatch!

Bob's most quiet time of the day is the morning. While words often escape him in the evening, the morning is relatively coherent, when a dialogue is still possible. The panic does not settle into Dad's eyes until the sun begins to set on the day. This morning, his head was resting on the back of the couch, and his eyes were closed. He was quiet. The couch pillows were arranged so that the ones which were supposed to go behind him were instead piled up on top of him. He clutched the over-sized pillow close to his body, hugging it tightly to his chest. Only his glasses peeked out over the top, the rest of his face hidden by the pillow. Dana and I were sitting on the other side of the room on the love seat, engrossed by our digital devices. The morning show was droning on in the background but none of us were minding it. The children had already been shuffled off to school so the house was unusually peaceful. With his eyes still closed, Bob said dreamily, "When I close my eye...