Mike's House
Even I've given up the pretense of poker first for this edition; there are transitions worth writing about.
David brought plans for his second floor addition, with
full intent to begin building just after July 4th. Except for concerns
about the staircase up to the second floor, he was looking forward to
the extra room: two children's rooms, a master bedroom, bath, closets,
etc. So ends all thoughts of moving,
Mark, equally excited about his move to Hubbardston, talked of plans to
add a garage for storage as soon as a he could line up a builder. A two
story garage at that. More pictures of his new property, with most impressive
lake views. His new house is dramatically different from the two previous
that I'm familiar with; large open spaces with many windows to take full
advantage of the view of the lake and the view of no neighbors. So end
all lawn disputes. Interestingly his house is almost halfway to the small
town in New Hampshire where we spend many of our available weekends camping
with Matt and his friends.
Rob bought a digital camera to take the place of his son, Andrew, who is off this fall to a college in Boca Raton, Florida. He is spending this last summer with Rob and Susan as his mother and step-father have already moved to Del Ray. They sold their Framingham house, one of the original "poker houses." I remember spending a night in a bedroom next to Andrew, when he was maybe two years old. I had missed a wintry turn, skidded into a curb and damaged the front end of my Rabbit. I managed to make it the Rob's, and the poker game (we were all a committed bunch then) but knew I would never make it home. From his house the next morning I had the car towed to the nearest Volkwagon dealer for repairs. Not much sleep, Andrew cried much of the night. Andrew, this summer, may leave the same trail, an unmade bed.
Across this same street from Rob, lived Mark, in a similar slab, ranch type house and it was Rob who introduced him to our group about nineteen years ago.
Dwight, has begun his new job in Burlington at Inteq http://www.inteqnet.com. I'm sure I'm not alone in my surprise that he left Bose. Working for a smaller, less structured company is taking some adjustment. The commute, forty-five minutes in the morning stretching to more than an hour for the return leg, doesn't help. He arrived at our poker game, not in his Nissan pickup with Mark, but alone in a sedan I didn't recognize.
Bryan's nine year old son, Gabe, appeared a year or so ago, on Cosby's Kids Say the Darndest Things, singing and playing his guitar. This may have just been the beginning because now he has an agent to follow up on other appearances. I don't know about his mother, but I do know Bryan can't a sing a lick.
I guess I have to include myself in this rambling prose. I've fallen into my work, managing a fairly busy website and ridding the the dot com roller coaster briefly, going from what looked like a quick sell to the collapse of our particular niche market. Now we're just another internet company striving to sell enough advertising to pay the bills . The year or so I spent transitioning from contractor to web worker was fairly brutal. Long hours spent working and learning and letting most other aspects of my life sit fallow, or peel . I've been painting my house since November, first the interior and now the outside. I've cleared brush, trimmed bushes, planted and tended to my garden and held steadfast to my new millennium resolution of simplifying. That means that almost on a weekly basis I find something new of Diane's to throw out.
About the poker game? I don't remember much, but I did win three dollars.
July 25
This is our semi annual trip to Dwight's house, a commute of more than 30 minutes for Rob and me, less for the others. We wonder again how Dwight makes the reverse trek to our houses on an almost monthly basis.
We
started with grilled animal, except for Rob who brought his imitation,
hard to look at, meat substitutes. Then potato salad and to compliment
the fresh corn, puzzles from Jennifer's corny joke book. "What does a
house boat become when it grows up? A township." That was the first of
many ,and frighteningly, Rob and Mark got most of the answers.
Not much has changed from last month, although Dave's addition was delayed by paperwork snafus, Bryan begged out after his transmission died (we charged him for food anyway) and Rob's son Andrew had a bit of a run in with the local authorities.
Mark did tell an amusing story to which I was sworn to
secrecy. He even threatened that if I mentioned a word of it to Jan, he'd
reveal something deep and dark to Diane about my past. But being a man,
I have to stand firm and resist intimidation. Besides, no one, not even
the members of this poker group, reads these pages, so here goes.
It's early evening and Mark is in his backyard listening
to the awful squawk of blackbirds. I'm not sure what the leap is from
the noise they make to his b b gun but soon it is in hand and the first
shot taken. Understand this is an animal loving family. Jan has three
dogs (soon to be four) and one cat; we all know she loves her dogs far
more than her husband and if they provided an income, out he'd go.
Also understand that these birds are in his neighbor's yard.
The second shot, much to Mark's surprise, drops that black bird like a
stone. Like a child who just broke a window, Mark slinks back into the
house, hoping no one notices. The next thing he knows, Jan has hung up
the phone, and is telling him that the neighbors were alerted by a tremendous
ruckus of howling birds (the whole extended family of birds upset about
their soon to be departed feathery brethren) and found an injured bird
on their porch.
"Mark", I asked, "you mean you shot the thing that close
to someone's house?"
'No,' he replies, "I don't know how it got there."
It scraped and clawed its wounded way looking for help - that's what it
did. And when that bird learns to speak, its pellet wound is discovered,
or when Jan reads this, I'd say Mark, wage earner or not, is gone.
Back to poker basics and perhaps another histoical moment:
You have to understand, it's just so easy to toss a night's winnings away
in one guts hand. I had just won, one five dollar hand, when I look at
the two cards I'm dealt, and see a three and a four. This is low guts;
this hand will win maybe 90% of the time. But 90% is not good enough for
me. I've settled into one of those nights where the cards are falling
for me - a rare experience - and I'm determined not to give back what
I've won. I dump the hand, thinking I'll never get better cards, but I
also won't be tempted to stayin and lose. What do I get in return? An
ace, two.
In my rush to show everyone the cards I tossed, I'm only barely aware that the other person still in the game, the one who will lose to my hand is Rob. Rob who exclaims, "You've been up my ass all night long." Truth is, I had been, and it was a rare and sweet smelling one too.
