After I've been drinking...

[meowmensteen]

So I grew up in a green house. A green house with a red front porch and two pink doors. It looked like a giant frog. My pink door went to the downstairs, and the other pink door went to the upstairs. There was a front yard and a back yard. My parents first moved there with my older sister. Before they were living in a commune called the Party House. Party as in the communist party. It was a commune run by our church. At some point they got sick of pooling all their money together to pay for everyone's wisdom tooth to be pulled out and what-not, and decided to move into the frog house where I grew up.

The first upstairs neighbor I remember was Janet. Janet From Another Planet. She was a former Hare Krishna, and would call my sisters and me her "little hares" (pronounced like hairy). We would scream up to her window when we got stung by bees, and she would throw ice cubes down to us to put on the stings. Sometimes she would let me come upstairs to see her collection of pine cones. My clearest memory of her was when she taught me how to make a band aid out of a cotton ball and a piece of scotch tape. She had a boyfriend named Bruce. He did a lot of LSD. He listened to Jimi Hendrix and tried to kiss the sky.

After Janet moved out to go live in a mental hospital, Caroline moved in. She used to argue with my dad all the time, and listen to old Tin Pan Alley songs over and over again. She was French Canadian, and looked like the most plainest person I've ever seen in my life. When I read Sarah, Plain and Tall, I always imagined Sarah looked like Caroline. Later on she ended up being my middle school teacher. That was weird. She wasn't the first, or the last, of my teachers that hated my father.

After Caroline was Bossy Heather and her fiance. I don't remember his name. He was very plain like Caroline and easy to boss around. That's why Heather liked him. Actually they bought the house with us in it. They moved in upstairs and kept us downstairs, using our rent to help pay the mortgage. Heather thought we were too noisy, and would also fight a lot with my father. They raised the rent a lot. We moved out. At this point it was only my dad, my little sister, and me. We got a small apartment in North Seattle. I was 17. I have a drawing I made when I was 16 of the house. I'll try to find it and post a picture.

Comments

[goblue.livejournal.com]

I've been having bourbon tonight, how about you?

Your drinking self tells some really interesting stories! More please! Exclamation point!

Just how often did you get stung by bees?

[meowmensteen]

More of that beer from Spokane. It has a 9.4% alcohol count. I did not notice that when I bought it. After that beer, I made some Irish cream with some of my horrible bourbon.

I didn't wear shoes much, and being stung by bees was a constant part of my childhood. I still find it hard to believe that my own child has never been stung by a bee. Of course I do make her wear shoes.

[goblue.livejournal.com]

I had a Dogfish Head 90 Minute IPA with dinner earlier, it's a full 10%. Supposedly their 120 Minute IPA is 18% but I've sure never seen it here in GA.

[susandennis]

Your drinking self tells some really interesting stories! More please! Exclamation point!

Yes, please! Fascinatingly so different than my own history (in the southeast in the 1950's).

[meowmensteen]

I like reading your history too.

[susandennis]

:)

[starthieving.livejournal.com]

I loved this.

[meowmensteen]

Thanks.

[minuetcat.livejournal.com]

Wow, what an assortment of neighbors! In itself, learning to live around them must have been quite an education for you.
I didn't get to sample as many people because the only time any of our neighbors moved out was when they got killed. I'm not joking. It happened to two of our next-door neighbors, one on either side of us. One was a knife fight; the other was a suspicious-sounding car fire in the mountains next to the reservoir, which matched a couple of other suspicious car fires prior. When those guys died, their families got out of town pretty quickly. Oh yeah, and there was the lady across the street, who passed away in her 90's. That seemed more normal.
The frog house sounds cute and loveable. It would be neat to see it.

[meowmensteen]

That's crazy. We had a crack house next door for a while, but they tore that down in '87 and build a much nicer three unit building. There were so many rats when they tore down the crack house. My mom would hit them with a shovel and let one of us girls jump on the shovel. People started calling her Mrs. Krueger after that.

[minuetcat.livejournal.com]

Wowee. If we ever get rats, I'm gonna remember that. I'm sure that if the rats ever made horror films of their own, your mother would be a prominent feature in them.

[blue-aardvark.livejournal.com]

Your story evoked the movie "Slums of Beverly Hills"--a similar tone, but that was just my first impression.

You have a lot of engaging material to draw from--you should become a writer.

[meowmensteen]

Material is only half the battle, I also have to be effective at communicating it all. I find that I have occasional moments where I can write well, but for the most part it's pretty crumby.

[herecirm.livejournal.com]

What a brilliant anecdote ... I particularly like the description of Janet. She's the kind of character I'd like to read about in a book.

[meowmensteen]

I miss here. Long after she moved out, I somehow acquired a notebook of her writings. It was mostly poems. I wrote a few into songs when I was big on playing the guitar and writing songs. Also in the notebook was a six page letter she wrote to the government on why they should legalize LSD. That letter was amazing. I wish I still had it.