Sidewalks

There was no sidewalk in front of our house. The sidewalk fairy had passed us over. Two doors down, at the Dyer’s house, a sidewalk proudly separated the street from the lot. The sidewalk transformed itself into small stones and then into dirt as it made its way from their place to ours. That’s the way things were in Brooklyn, Indiana, population 308. Whatever mysterious civic forces, in charge of dispensing sidewalks, decided 108 North Church Street did not need or deserve such an amenity. It’s likely the decision, to omit a sidewalk, took place decades before we moved to town in the early sixties, and now it just had to must be accepted. Any activities, requiring sidewalks, had to be done in front of Kim and Kevin Dyer’s house. And that was fine by us. Kim and Kevin were our best buds and they had been since we moved into town. Kim and Kevin were twins and Dennis and I were almost twins with barely a year separated us. We were the last of “the four boys.”

In a family of nine children, it is necessary to break the children up into working groups such as “The Four Boys” or “The girls,” which referred to my two younger sisters, Teresa and Anna. Ron, Joe, Dennis and I (in chronological order) comprised “The four boys.” Our older sister Marilyn separated us from the eldest boy, Douglas. Douglas was always referred to by his given name, a privilege that came with being the first-born, the same with Marilyn, because she was the first girl in the family. Howard, my youngest brother, was referred to as “the baby.” “Where’s the Baby,” or “The Baby’s crying” or “Who locked the Baby in the closet.”

The Witmer house was large by Brooklyn standards. My father worked for the Federal Government, not the State government or the city government, the Federal Government. Whenever I spoke this truth, the inflection in my voice changed, to emphasize to the listener just how important my Dad was. It was rumored, that in the event of a nuclear holocaust, my Dad could actually become President of the United States. All that would be necessary is for every elected official in the Federal Government and the entire military hierarchy to be wiped out. Then the succession plan named Federal Employees and my dad was a Federal Employee. That’s why we could afford such a big, two-story house. Yes, it may have been located in a no-account town but it was big just the same and we were big fish in a little pond.

We had six bedrooms if you counted the room off the living room that my parents used for their bedroom and the back porch study where we kept a little bed for company. We had two bathrooms and one had a shower, not just a tub. The garage was attached by a “breezeway” a fancy name for an enclosed walkway connecting our back porch and the small two-car garage. The driveway was gravel, crossing a small culvert as it came in from the road. The exterior was a combination of white asbestos siding and brick. Inside the home boasted wood floors and simulated wood grain walls. The simulated wood grain was printed on the sheetrock, almost like contact paper, and to this day, I have never seen anything like it.