The Fireplace Must be Taken

Sitting here at my parents house is always weird.

This is the house I grew up in, moved into in nineteen-freaking-seventy-nine. I remember the day we moved in, and the first night in my room, the night we ditched my nightlight for good.

Of course the house has been done over twice now, but little relics remain. Beneath the back deck lies a Tonka play set that was taken outside in 1980 and has not moved from that spot.

The inside shelf of my old closet is exactly as I left it 25 years ago. On said shelf sit soccer participation trophies, the Garfield books I cackled over at night, a hardboard pic of Dwight Gooden, a caricature of me drawn at age 10, a few photos from college, a legal pad from my US Senate internship of 1995. It's not just a relic of my past, it's a relic of my past up till that point.

The house itself has little relics, rocks in the stream of time. There in the family room are the same tiny white and beige window curtains from 1985. Beneath lies a piece of insolation I pulled in and out of the window sill with my big toe throughout the Reagan/Bush years. There's also the fireplace. This being the Hudson highlands that fireplace got used a lot, usually as a weekend treat with a college football game on in the background. When my father wasn't looking I used to chuck playing cards, Lincoln logs, toy soldiers into it.

There's still a little hole in the brick façade which I picked  out with a blue handled screw driver from a set my mother's father gave me. It was an excellent pos for a Jap MG. They're sneaky bastards. That fireplace dominated the family room floor like the Golan over northern Israel. When the carpet was green army men emerged from the jungle to take that fireplace countless times. After my mother put in beige carpet, well, it was time for the Desert Rats. God damn those two 1/72 scale Kraut 88mm guns. Our 1/72 scale Shermans never stood a chance.

If the reader has ever wondered why there's usually a scene in one of my books where tanks are occupying high ground and just blowing the crap out of everything below, well...