House

Our house on Burlington Avenue

The summer of 1983 we’d been renting this place on Burlington Avenue in Billings.  At 421 Burlington, next door to Mr. and Mrs. Frank, whom I thought could have been children of immigrants who came to the U.S. from Germany after World War I.  Mrs. Frank sounded like one who grew up speaking German and English.  Many who settled south of Billings in Joliet and Red Lodge came from German stock.  According to the Library of Congress website, conditions in Germany triggered many to leave the country.  Our Struckmann forebears exited Germany in 1849 when hopes for democratic reforms were crushed. Several waves of German immigrants followed. Then, according to the NLC,  “When Germany’s Nazi party came to power in 1933, it triggered a significant exodus of artists, scholars and scientists, as Germans and other Europeans fled the coming storm.” 

Mrs. Frank complained of our beautiful yellow cat, Burton, because he was an outdoor cat, inclined to sit on the hood of her car to get warm.  This was back in 1983, when the globe was cooler.  

Mrs. Frank confronted me.  Stopped me, really, on our shared driveway.  She told me in her most strident tone that when she drove to church, the paw tracks on her car looked “dumb.”  She emphasized the last word, sort of spitting it out, then mumming the “m” sound with her lips.

For my part, I agreed with her.  Her car was dumb, but what the hell. It ran. Our car was in pieces, because I was trying to rebuild its engine.

Because she parked her mid-size Chevy under a carport, I fantasized draping a net down the front and sides to keep Burton off.  Did she catch Burton, specifically, on her car?  I’m thinking maybe, maybe not.  Mrs. Frank thought I was one of the motorcycle gang who rented 421 before us.  I suggested the motorcycles had long gone, but she wouldn’t have it.  I had a beard, didn’t I?

Is this the house I’m addressing in this essay?  No, go east on Burlington two blocks.

P. and I loved the house we rented at 421, and we would have wanted to buy it, but I was a pharmacy intern at Deaconess Hospital, earning about $6/hour.  Sometimes, to entertain ourselves, we’d stroll the neighborhood, because a few blocks away were mansions.  At 215 Burlington we walked past a pickup with its brake lights on.  I knocked.  A young man with long hair thanked me, said he had a faulty brake pedal spring.  We heard him trot over to his truck as we headed the two blocks home.

This house with the faulty pickup brake pedal spring became our home when the long-haired kid’s father, John Frasco, sold it to us about three months later.  

P. and I have lived here more than 40 years, and the house—and its contents—is the subject of my list.  All the contents with terse notations.  Room by room.