Thank God my mother reads the obituaries. It’s something I really need to get into the habit of doing. It was in the paper a few weeks ago that we learned our neighbor had passed away. We hadn’t seen him in more than a year; he had been in a nursing home after suffering a fall. During a walk around the block this weekend I saw his sister sitting on his front steps. I walked up to express my condolences. She told me it was pneumonia that got him in the end. It was quick, she said.
Tom and Sandy were some of the first neighbors we met after moving in a little more than 20 years ago. They had the corner lot, and the back of their house faced our backyard. Naturally, we saw a lot of each other – and as a little boy who was about three years old – I thought that was great. They didn’t have any kids, so they spoiled me like a grandson they never had.
In better days, Tom grew vegetables out back. He would bring over paper bags full of cucumbers and tomatoes. They had fruit trees too, and we would enjoy the fresh picked peaches on hot summer days. Summer was always the season we saw the most of each other. Dad and I would be working in the yard and so was Tom, and we would get to talking.
He was a bricklayer before he retired. He would talk about some of the job sites he had worked…Pittsford Plaza, parts of Beebee Station at High Falls. He even bricked up the front of his house. He also shared stories of his time in the Marine Corps, stationed at Camp Lejeune. We would talk for hours.
Model trains were his other passion. He had owned shops, went to conventions, and after he closed the store he ran a small mail order business. He showed us his own display that he had built over several years. It took up a good chunk of his basement, and as a little kid it was mesmorizing. After that I begged to start one of my own, but it never happened!
Sandy died in the summer of 2000. I found out after getting back from a 10-day Boy Scout trip to the UK. It was only a matter of time; she had been diagnosed with lung cancer earlier that year. She and Tom were chain-smokers nearly their whole lives. His sister told me they started when they were 16. They were sweethearts even back then.
They started each day the same way – over a cup of coffee and a cigarette at the kitchen table. When the weather was nice and we slept with the windows open, I would wake up and hear them talking and laughing. Tom would take out the dog (“goddammit Fritz…FRITZ!”), and then it was time for more coffee and more talking.
That’s how I imagine the two of them once again. After 14 years apart, they are picking up where they left off – over a cup of coffee and cigarette at a table high in the sky.
PENT-UP CURIOSITY 