A Million Little Pieces Of My Mind

I'm not sure why we moved. My grandfather had died a few months before, so strictly speaking, we could have used one fewer bedrooms, if Gramma and Mom shared a room. So maybe a smaller house would be cheaper. Or it might have been that Mom didn't want to continue living on an island that often became inaccessible during hurricanes. In any case, she sold the place in Coquina Gables and we moved to a house on Sevilla Street, which was actually walking distance (slightly over a half-mile) to my high school!

We weren't the first to leave Coquina Gables, either. My classmate and friend (and, eventually, wife), Mary Steinberg, also moved from A Street closer into town, though still on the Island.

And the house we moved into wasn't just any house. It had been owned by the family of another classmate, Joe Oliveros, who sold it shortly after the murder of one of their two daughters in a Jacksonville restroom. So they moved, too—into the home next door to Mary's new place!

This is what we mean when we say St. Augustine was a small town.

My sisters and I do not remember the actual move, so it may have "happened" while we were in school.

Now, to be honest, I didn't like the place. It was an OCD nightmare. To start with, the walls had once been textured, but were then painted over with a thick coat of glossy, puke-green paint. So it was like being surrounded by very hazy and distorted mirrors. Then the kitchen had some sort of furnace in it that reminded Mom of the Robot in Lost In Space, so that's what she called it. It had a nest of flues and pipes and had been painted with silver glossy paint.

The Oliveroses sure did like their glossy paint!

But my biggest complaint was my bedroom. It was—the porch. Mom paid to have it enclosed, making it something called a sleeping porch, though I was unaware until yesterday that that even ever was a thing. She bought me a brand-new sofa bed, so I could entertain guests or sleep in it.

Now, looking back, I'm sorry I got my whities in a twist. The house also didn't have air conditioning (in Florida!) so in summer my room, with the windows open, was probably the coolest one in the house. In Shop Class (or mechanical drawing) I designed and built a piece of furniture that held my stereo on top and my record collection within, accessible via sliding drawers. So despite my feeling put-upon—my room in Coquina Gables had also been an add-on, also without air conditioning—I really had it pretty sweet.

At least I had my own room! I was the only occupant of the house who did.

There was a high window in my sisters' room, adjacent to mine, which of course had originally been a window to the porch. When it was a porch, and not my bedroom. In the summers we'd open that window, and my sisters and I would then tell jokes to each other through it. Mostly knock-knock jokes. Mary Joan has always had an awesome and very funny sense of humor, but for some reason knock-knock jokes were slightly beyond her grasp. But Louise got them.

One night, the last joke got told and I fell asleep, as I assumed my sisters did as well. But suddenly, after midnight, both Louise and I were awakened by Mary Joan's burst of out-loud laughter. When she could speak, she gasped, I just got the joke!

Now, the rooms—the regular rooms—were reasonably large. My gramma (step-grandmother actually, only 9 years Mom's senior) basically used it as her parlour, not unlike the way I'm doing now that I'm a senior.

I moved out the next year to go to school in Tampa. I did wind up coming back briefly before getting married to Mary Steinberg. Louise had her first little one, Kevin. That was a rocky relationship so Louise spent a lot of time recovering back home with Mom and Gramma.

Perhaps that led Mom to thinking that we might all be coming and going, possibly for years to come! So, once the three of us kids had gotten married, Mom sold the house as fast as possible so that, we were sure, we couldn't move back in. She and Gramma then moved into a little 2-bedroom apartment on Cordova Street, quite close to the first house we'd lived in on St. George Street.