First Contact, early 1970's

I don't remember the name of the road; maybe it didn't even have a name. It was a rut and pothole ridden dirt track along the Little Miami River. You had to drive through an old rail road tunnel and pass a couple of abandoned gravel pits to get the houses. There were only four houses on that road, all on the right side, the side facing the river. The left side of the road had a couple of over grown fields leading into some woods that climbed a hill.

The houses were initially built as summer camps for folks with a bit of money that wanted to get away from the humidity and sweat of the city. The first house was occupied by a group of “in-breds” with an assortment of cattle and chickens running through their home. What they lacked in creativity, they made up for by possessing a knack for the obvious. Their black dog was named Blackie; brown cow, Brownie; their cat, Kittie; their other brown cow, Brownie 2. You get the picture. I was never in their home, but I imagine it was an assortment of broken tools, old newspapers, and empty cases of canned meats. How many people lived in that house no one really knew - with the comings and goings, one looked pretty much the same as the next amorphic body shape, with greasy, pasty hair and the same set of assorted chipped, yellow teeth.

The road eventually dead-ended at the foot of a dry creek bed and there sat the only house really worth living in; it was only occupied on the occasional weekend when the old couple that still took care of their "river camp" came out to spend the night, light a fire, water geraniums and do a bit of fishing.

Our house sat dead in between the two of them, approximately half a mile each way. We had two nearly finished ranch homes, one further along than the other. Each had the exact same floor plan, except the left one didn't have any walls on the inside, just studs and loose wires, no heat, no water, an unfinished construction site. My dad nailed up half sheets of ply wood and particle board along the studs and decided to turn the ranch house into a horse and cow barn. The brilliance of this decision wasn't lost on my nine-year-old mind.

Our house, an exact mirror version of the make-shift barn next door except for the inclusion of running water, base board heat and walls, was just as odd. Of course we didn't have the horse shit or cow feces piling up in the corners, but it did have its own assorted smells. Being 1972, incense was pretty much the dominating aroma, with the underlying nose of rancid beef and pork fat, stale beer a sweet mildew fungus-like smell creeping out from the bottom of the back bedroom door. This room was rarely used and always dark, it didn't have a bed, but it did have an aluminum folding chaise lounge with some of the plastic webbing missing. River camp chic at its best.  The blue

indoor-outdoor carpet was always damp, a result of the walls not being properly sealed to the foundation.

Bird Dog Lane house only had two bedrooms, a kitchen and a living room. The bathroom had a sort of psychedelic poster with the Cheshire cat sitting on a giant mushroom smoking a hookah. The words "...keep off the grass..." wafted out of the bowl. I always felt there was something special I was supposed to know about that poster, some secret only club members and insiders got to discover. A few weeks later I got to make that discovery.