SENTIMENTAL JOURNEY

         I picked the small stuffed bear off the floor under the make up table. I gave it to her on her birthday last year. She smiled but hadn’t the strength to punch the tummy, as I did now, and hear the birthday ditty. It played out as my mind drifted.

         Morgan would have recognized the woman on the screen. It was Cecily, the healthy young weather person on Action News in Philadelphia. She was telling me we were in for a soaker this gloomy March day. A glance out the motel window told me that. It was nearly seven but I did not have to be at my client's house until after nine.

         I had checked in after eleven the night before. This would be my only two-day trip to Philadelphia this year. I had reserved a room using an Internet site that caters to people traveling with pets. I reckoned that any motel that would accept my dog would accept me. Perhaps fearing that I had a Bengal tiger in the car, the desk clerk said she had no record of my reservation, but after a glance at the car, she said she could give me a room. On my way to it, I noticed next door the "Original Philly Diner."

         What luck! My sustenance that day consisted of a pack of peanut butter crackers. I dropped my bag and laptop in my room and walked through the parking lot to the warm lights that beckoned. I was seated in a two- person booth. A menu was handed me. I became a junior Nighthawk.

         Within minutes I knew something was lacking: good diner cooking. Despite the engaging political gossip being thrown about by the men in the booth across from me, and the hard work of the waitress, the food finished down the charts. The BLT club was acceptable once the pink cannonballs masquerading as tomatoes were gleaned off, but the home fries, THE HOME FRIES, the sine qua non of any diner meal simply did not bring back those of thirty-odd years ago. Say it again, Thomas, 'YOU CAN'T GO HOME AGAIN.'

         When morning came, I blessed the rain for preventing me from taking another trip to Ptomaine City. I sat in my room working on another tax return until it was time to go. I pushed the car into the rain on the Industrial Highway, turned about at the first spot available and hung a left at PA Route 420. I could have driven to the Interstate known locally as The Blue Route. It would have been quicker, but by this time Rod’s music had kicked in. You know the tune, the 'doo-doo-doo-doo' as another dimension is entered.

         I crossed Chester Pike and headed for McDade Boulevard, and suddenly I knew I had been here, and in the months before we moved to New York. We had always come from the opposite direction, but there was no mistaking the fact that I was getting close. I drove under the railroad bridge, the fog lifted and there it was on the left, the Marburn Curtain Warehouse.

         It was not really a warehouse, but a fairly small store that sat in the same center as a Rite-Aid Pharmacy and a Swiss Farms Market. Joanie, my office manager, had clued me in back in the days when I had an office to manage. Joanie was a prime coupon clipper and money saver. When she liked a place, you knew it was cheap.

         Did Morgan and I come here only twice? I suppose so. I found only two charges on my credit cards for those years. Despite the fact that I owned my own business and could take off whenever I chose, we always went on Saturday afternoon. Their parking lot was tiny, but we always managed to squeeze into a spot. Morgan would disappear behind the door, leaving the dog and I to our own entertainment. After many walks around the lot and after sitting in the car for what seemed an eternity, I would decide to follow my wife into the maw of the beast.

         Floor to ceiling bins was the only way to describe the store. In each bin were plastic bags holding sets of curtains. The aisles and sections were marked by type, but I can not recall any displays. This place was for serious curtain hunters. I was not a serious curtain hunter. My one thought was that the curtain warehouse was a first class firetrap. I must be wrong. Business must be good. It is still standing, or was on the morning of March 20, 2002.

         The second time we visited, shortly before we moved, Morgan had in her mind a definite vision for the bay window at our new house. Around and around the bins she would go, pulling out plastic bags and asking my opinion. She might as well have asked a gorilla, but eventually she settled on what she wanted. One cold December day I helped her hang her vision. She sat in her chair, looked at the result, and said, ‘you don’t know how much pleasure they give me.”

         I drove past the warehouse in the rain, my eyes watering from the memory. In the three plus years, her curtains have suffered the ravages of a cat that delights in biting them when she wants to be fed or have attention paid. Morgan would yell at her and I do the same now, but the pale flower design of the fabric is not to be saved. They are tied back to keep the observer from seeing the gaping holes.

         Without Morgan, the house has been left to this creature whose sole skill is booting up a computer. A painting was brought out of the garage, but sits unframed. The parrot pastel was moved from the living room to the guest room to replace a woodcut given to Morgan’s brother. In its place an oil on canvas of mother, father and child was miraculously hung without pulling down the wall. Nothing else has changed.

         Left to my own ambitions and taste, the house will remain as is and founder about me as the twenty-five years given in my Single Life expectancy table play out. I recognize this and fight it at times. On a warm Easter Saturday afternoon, I sat on my deck and asked friend Pamela for suggestions. In a few minutes she was able to prioritize what had to be done soon and then she sat back and spun a Big Picture of what my house could look like. Her ideas were fresh, especially to a man so bereft of thoughts of his own. I wanted to hire her on the spot.

         Ah, but what of the curtains, or the bedspreads that the dog is slowly destroying? Could I see myself some Saturday afternoon inside the Marburn Curtain Warehouse, picking over the wares and choosing valances and shams? And when my shopping is done, will I speed down 420 to the Original Philly Diner and see if they have made any progress on their home fries?

Valatie April 21, 2002
@2002 David J Lidle