Things began with a hot and steamy Monday off from work. It's August.In an August not long after the end of WWII, you see my grandfather Sweeney holding my sister in our backyard. It was August of 1952 in fact, and there's a rose in bloom to his right. Remember that rose.
My occasional days off are pretty much spent being a housebound layabout. I nap a bit, catch up on email, take another nap, get the dogs out to pee, catch another nap. It has a pleasing drowsy rhythm to it.
This past Monday, though, I had a nagging urge to drive to Scranton, to poke around some neighborhoods unpoked by me in one whole heck of a lot of time.
After lunch with my wife in Tunkhannock, Scranton it was.
I was particularly interested in the Pine Brook section of the city, and for a couple of reasons; it's where I'm from, and it's a neighborhood about to be changed forever by the arrival of TCMC a few blocks away.
This is the house in which I was "born."When the folks brought me home from Mercy Hospital, also but a few blocks away, home was right here in Pine Brook. A double, we lived on the left side at 1008 Monsey Avenue. On the other side at 1006 lived Mr. Spellman, William Spellman.
The photo is fresh, taken just Monday from my truck as I sat across the street. Mr. Spellman, an elderly gentleman, was our landlord and just a really nice man. To the left of the house is an auto parts store, where some guy, maybe an employee, started eyeballing me as I fired off a few frames of the old place. He stared. I stared back. I'm betting he made me for a real estate agent.
I have vivid memories of Mr. Spellman. Some mornings I'd toddle - that's what toddlers do, right? - on over and sit with the kind and gentle Mr. Spellman at his breakfast table. The aroma of fresh brewed or perked coffee reminds me of him to this very second.
My parents were very fond of the Spellmans, staying in touch over the decades until most all of their generations had expired. Mr. Spellman kept a very nice backyard, had himself a green thumb. Even though we moved from his house in 1953, I do remember the backyard and the flowers in bloom. There was also a small vegetable garden up in the left corner of the yard.
Not that you'd be inclined to go in search of it, I'm here to to tell you that there is no 1008 Monsey Avenue today in Scranton. The house is there, the 1000 block of Monsey is long gone, as is the 900 and 1100 of Monsey. While Monsey Avenue surely exists nearby, those three blocks of it were renamed Sanderson Avenue somewhere back in the late 50s. For whatever unknown reason, the city changed the name.
When I memorized my address as just a little kid, it was 1008 Monsey Avenue - and that would Ten-Oh-Eight. The brand new Mr. and Mrs. Vincent T. Sweeney are seen here on their wedding day in the front room of that house on Monsey. My father and mother in the middle,
flanked by my uncle and godfather, Jack Sweeney, and my late aunt, Betty Davies. Dad looks like he was working on some Kramer hair long before the world knew what a Kramer was. My mom, Nancy, was the last survivor of that bunch then so young. She was the last to go.I hadn't even driven past the front of the old house in what has to be at least ten years now. The pleasant surprise is its condition, which isn't half bad at all. My guess is that the property is no longer occupied. Oddly, however, it looks like it hasn't been all that long since someone was performing at least minimal maintenance on the place. Over the 56 intervening years, I have no clue as to its history of residents and/or owners, but it's still there, complete with unbroken windows, in itself remarkable.
Back to Mr. Spellman. There's an alley behind the old house named Spellman Court, which takes its name from his family, so I swung up Ash Street and around and through the alley to get the back view of the once 1008 Monsey Avenue.
Straight ahead, I could see the back doors that I honestly remember as a three year old. In between those doors, there's a set of "Bilco" doors leading to a split basement, one for each side of the double house, or as they've come to be called, double-block houses.
The backyard should be far more overgrown for an abandoned house, which increases the
mystery and my curiosity as to just what's going on here. Lacking only a pass or two with a mower, the lawn looks like one that lots of guys spend every weekend babying. It appears to be doing fine all by itself.I'm sitting there in Spellman Court, staring into a backyard I haven't so much as glanced at in what could be over fifty years. A flood of memories sounds a little corny, so let's just say there was a slow trickle. Right at the head of that trickle were thoughts of Mr. Spellman's roses, which were pretty much smack in the middle of the yard, closer to the house than the alley.
That's when I saw what I really didn't believe I could possibly see.Right there, still pretty much smack in the middle of that very same yard, roses. White? Cream? Without trespassing, and it was a brief consideration, there was no real way of knowing.
Is it possible? Could the roses I first thought I saw, then racked out my lens and did indeed see, could they be from the same rosebush my grandfather stood near in 1952, the same rosebush I ran around in my shorts in 1953?
Wishful thinking, I suppose. A bit of whimsy as I look back on life in the realization that far more is behind than ahead of me. One thing not capable of being blamed is imagination. Roses, apparently of the same color, are in approximately the same place as were roses nearly 60 years ago.
Consider that there are rosebushes in this country whose documentation verifies them as being 250 years of age. Click and enlarge this small collage. See what you see. See if it might be the same as me.
It was a hazy, hot, and humid day with nothing to do.
I did do something. I saw Mr. Spellman's roses again. I really think I did.
