Part 3: 338 Carr Avenue
In 1959 we moved from Keyport to Keansburg. I remember going to the house in Keansburg when its
owners, the Ceiceis were still there. The house had four bedrooms but Mr. and Mrs. Ceicei were using one
of them as a dining room. The idea that people would eat anywhere other then the kitchen was quite odd to me.
My sister was born in 1960. For a bit I shared the downstairs bedroom with her, but for some reason, her crib scared me
and my parents moved me to my own room upstairs. I really liked that room. The two upstairs bedrooms were wood paneled
and there was a pleasant, I don't know, wood smell about the place. The problem was they became a furnace in the summertime.
So dad bought an air conditioner and every summer I'd move into his bedroom. I'd also go up there after school because his bedroom also had
a radio. I'd turn on WABC and listen to music while I read.
Reading was one of the good things about my childhood. My parents bought me a lot of books and even had a bookcase sort of carved into one wall of my bedroom.
I had no friends, so I spent a lot of time with those books. I had a lot of the Tom Swift books. This was the second series. Dad turned me onto them
because as a boy he had read the first series. Tolkien I discovered on my own. I was in a store and saw this cover:
That was enough for me, the cover sold me. I read that and afterwards they bought me the trilogy. I read those books over and over and, while
I didn't exactly have a happy childhood, I'm really grateful that mom and dad let me read whatever I wanted.
Kids today will never understand what it was like to grow up with a house with only one television. The fights that my sister
and I had over shows were legendary. There was only one unbreakable rule. If dad was home on Saturday night (he worked shift work) we'd
be watching Jackie Gleason. Even my mom respected that rule.
As we grew older my sister and I developed two different ways of dealing with mom. My sister was outgoing and spent as much time
as she could with her friends. I was shy and didn't have any friends so I retreated into books. In my senior year at high school
I made a remarkable discovery, people found some of the stuff I said to be quite funny. While high school sucked, my senior year wasn't so bad.
In fact, I was a little pissed at myself for not having discovered the concept of humor as a defense mechanism earlier.
I went to a community college my first two years so I still lived at home. But things were better for me. Between classes and my job I was out of the house
for long stretches. My junior year I transferred to Glassboro. In 1977 I spent one last summer at home then moved out for good. My sister spent about another
ten years there, then she moved in with her boyfriend. Mom and dad were alone.
At first I used to go back for frequent visits. But as my parents aged there was an oppressive atmosphere in the place. It had nothing to do with the
natural infirmities that come with age, it was like some outside thing weighing down on you the moment you walked in. When my sister was planning
to sell the place she said, "I know you don't believe in God and I know you'll think I'm crazy but I want to hire an exorcist for mom and dad's home before
I sell it." I told her I'd split the cost.
As it turned out, one wasn't needed. Whatever was causing the oppression left with mom and dad. When I went there for the last time before it was sold, it was
just a place.
But there were good things too. Books, I mentioned, but there were Christmas trees, I had a record player and a tape recorder and there were computers.
I was interested in computers from an early age. If I hadn't sucked at math I might have made a career there. Dad was an electrician who tried to interest me
in his field. It didn't take so he was pleased at my love for computers. I had a Digi-Comp 1 a Digi-Comp 2 and a Geniac. Much later, I bought real
computers and this pleased my dad no end. Not just that I was into computers but that I actually knew something about how they worked.
Today a cop lives in that house. It looks a little kitschy but the place looks happy, at least from the outside. I'm kind of sorry about
the tree on the right, it looks like it's dying. When I was small I used to hide behind it, because in those days its branches went all the way
down its trunk. Strange to think that you might outlive a tree.