I can’t recall ever living in a place without a canine or two as part of the family.  In fact, I believe a house without at least one dog wandering the rooms is not living up to its potential for being “home.”

The years go by, faster all the time, and I find myself becoming melancholy as I see, in my tail-wagging friends, the subtle signs of aging. The playfulness remains, but for shorter periods. The coats get a bit more grey, the teeth a bit more yellow.

I just sat here and watched my little girl Boston Terrier walk incredibly slowly up some stairs. It was geriatric pace, almost surreal. This is a 15-pound dog with bulging thighs. She loves to flatten her large ears against her neck, get real close to the ground and explode with uncanny speed. But there she was, dragging her butt upstairs, one … step … at … a … time, almost as if she were using a walker.

To be fair, this dog is not normal. She does very strange, non-doglike, things all the time. She thinks a lot. She clearly sits and ponders. So maybe she was just deep in thought as she climbed the stairs.

A Box of Crumpled Paper and Pure Love

The good news is the dogs in this house haven’t allowed aging to diminish their senses of humor. And the really good thing about dog senses of humor is that the dogs don’t even know they have senses of humor. I’m assuming they don’t, of course, just as I assume they don’t realize how perfect they are at practicing unquestioning, unconditional love every time I walk through the front door.

Tonight found the male of the duo standing bolt upright inside a big, orange wheelbarrow being pushed around the yard by my son. The bulging Boston Terrier eyes showed no sign of distress as the lovable creature “stood at the helm” of the bouncing vehicle. I never have a camera when I need one.

The impact on a family that good dogs can have should not be discounted. When the subject of tattoos came up the other day, my kid said he someday was going to get inked with an image of his wheelbarrow-riding best friend. If he’d said he wanted a tat of anything else, I would have bristled. But I know his love for this dog, and I just nodded. I couldn’t think of any reason to dissuade him.

Removing the plaster ceiling in the kitchen, a messy project that took place in the very early 1990s, was probably historically wrong. (I learned long ago that removing the plaster from the exterior of stone buildings to reveal the stones is also a historical no-no.) However, doing it added charm to the kitchen, and from the exposed beams there soon were hanging all types of “country home” doodads like baskets and pots and pans.

The beams aren’t hand-hewn. They were obviously cut in a 19th Century sawmill. And they were obviously not meant to be open for viewing. Although they have flat sides, for the most part, some of the old beams aren’t too far removed from being tree trunks.

Nevertheless, I didn’t think any of them had remaining bark, so I can’t explain how a 21-inch piece of bark suddenly appeared on the kitchen floor about a half-hour ago. Actually, it didn’t just appear there. It apparently landed there.

I say “apparently” because I didn’t see it happen. With the exception of the sleeping dogs, I was alone in the room. In fact, I was washing dishes when I heard a pretty loud “bang” from behind. What the hell?” I asked, presumably addressing the question to the awakened dogs or to God.  I soon found, on the floor on the other side of the room, the strange chunk of bark.

Falling Bark Zone

The only possible source for this solitude-smashing piece of wood is the exposed beams. However, I can’t find any obvious evidence showing which beam decided to shed its skin. I’m not going to get all weird and poltergeisty. It’s a slice of bark. It fell to the kitchen floor. If I’d been washing a sharp knife, I might be missing a finger now, but I don’t think ghosts are to blame.

All-in-all, incidents like this remind me that life in an old house sure is different than life in a new house. How many denizens of new construction can say pieces of bark have fallen from their ceilings? If we’re talking about pieces of cheap, plastic molding or flimsy light fixtures or poorly-installed drywall, then maybe low-quality new houses also fall victim to gravity-based mishaps.

I might save my wayward slab of wood as a reminder that it’s normal and OK to lose bits and pieces as we age. My pieces of bark are the hairs atop my head. Or maybe the lesson is that things in life fall apart all the time, but the trick is to be on the other side of the room when it happens, if possible.

A couple years ago, I was up on the front porch roof. I know you’re not supposed to stand on a tin roof, but the thing is in need of replacement anyway and, short of using anti-gravity equipment, I can’t think of another way to get to the siding and windows above the porch.

I don’t remember why I was up there. Probably scraping and repainting the windows. The sun beats on that part of the house without mercy and even the  best paint throws in the towel and starts getting flaky after a few years.

It was a breezy summer day. Maybe “breezy” is an understatement. While I was busy doing whatever I was doing I heard what can only be described as an “aluminum scraping on tin” sound. The breeze had turned into a wind ;and the noise I heard was my lightweight aluminum ladder sliding across the edge of the tin roof. The scraping sound was followed by a crashing sound, as the thing hit the cement walkway below.

This is what’s known in technical manuals as being “stuck on the roof.” It’s similar to being “up the creek without a paddle” but possibly worse (unless the creek leads to a waterfall and you can’t swim). Aside from breaking a window to get into the house, my only option for descent was jumping.  A more limber person, perhaps one named Gumby, might have been able to survive that method of returning to ground level. Not me. I have absolutely no flexibility. I pull neck muscles while shaving.

I’m pretty sure there were people inside the house. However, my knocks on the window went unanswered. I didn’t want to scream “help” because … well because that would have been incredibly embarrassing. The neighbors, after all, were sitting on their front porch.

What I soon found out is that the crashing sound of my wayward ladder didn’t go unnoticed by the aforementioned neighbors. I looked over at them and saw that they were looking back. I’d rather not describe their facial expressions but mine was similar to the one I displayed at a Kansas concert in the late 1970s when I accidentally moon-walked into the ladies room. Have you ever been experienced? Well I have.

It no longer mattered that the neighbors were smirking. When one of them came over to rescue me, I thanked her profusely. Smirk all you want, my savior.

Today I climbed onto an even higher tin roof. I tied the ladder down as a means of preventing it from trying to escape, but when I was ready to get down I got a case of the heebie-jeebies. Why is it always the case that ladders placed at what seem to be perfectly safe angles at ground level appear to be virtually vertical when you’re ready to get down.

Everyday a little sadder, a little madder. Someone get me a ladder.

As if that trick of geometry isn’t bad enough, there’s just something about an aluminum ladder resting on a tin roof that doesn’t inspire confidence. Maybe that something is called “lack of friction.” I found myself 20 feet off the ground and frozen.

I will not claim foresight or preparation played a part in me having my cellphone. I just happened to have it. And, for a change, its battery wasn’t dead.

“Come outside and hold this ladder so I can get off this roof,” I texted my son. “Ha ha ha” began his reply. “I’ll be out in a sec.”

I’m down. The ladder is still up. It can’t go anywhere, even if a wind kicks up, because it’s tied down.  And this blog is named “Permaladder” for a reason, dammit.

I hear all sorts of things in this small, country hamlet called Marksboro. On a quiet Sunday evening, when the traffic from the highway that bisects the old village is light, the sounds of voices from a quarter-mile away float to my ears. The words, distorted by air and obstacles, are muddled just enough to be indecipherable.

Laughter better survives the movement from source to recipient, as do dog barks, car engines being started, car doors being closed. The wind often carries the drone of farming equipment working a field.  For a brief time last year, an owl let its presence be known and on many mornings a murder of crows makes a loud appearance (especially when I toss into the yard  popcorn uneaten the night before).

The cessation of sound is often more jarring than the sound itself. I hear, and virtually feel, the sudden blanket of quiet that settles when somebody finally finishes cutting the grass and hits the kill switch on their lawnmower.  It creates guilt about my own weekly muddling of the aural atmosphere with my mower. I’ve been very annoying with a chainsaw, but at least I can say I’ve never owned a leaf-blower (the noise pollution king of autumn).

With two decades of life here under my belt, I expect and recognize the routine sounds. But there came a day not long ago when an amazingly wonderful new noise filled the town: The crowing of a rooster. I doubt there’s any sound that better proves you’re living in the country and does so with all-day-long gusto and high-decibel stamina, than rooster proclamations.

My across-and-down-the-road neighbor John, I recently learned, is the man responsible for adding the cock-a-doodle-doo ravings of a rooster to the Marksboro soundscape. He said he simply wanted to have chickens, so he took the plunge. The cacophony begins early each morning, alerting all in the village that the feathered father is awake and on duty guarding his hen and flock.

Airborne Lacrosse Practice

I wonder what the residents who are beyond visual contact but within earshot of this house thought when, about 18 months ago, there came across the borough another unusual sound: a deep and repetitive “thwump, thwump, thwump.”  Occasionally accompanied by laughter, the sound of our trampoline in use is probably not too different from that made 150 years ago when my predecessors, who weren’t likely to be laughing at the time but could have been,  beat the dirt from their rugs during spring cleaning.

I can have fun on the trampoline but only if I force myself to not look at the  house while bouncing. If I don’t, I stare at clapboards that need repainting or windows that need cleaning. “I shouldn’t be having fun on a trampoline. I should be on a ladder with a paintbrush in my hand,” says the Internal Voice.

That inner nag is one sound heard by nobody but myself. It’s a persistent sound capable of drowning out even a broken-record rooster, a rug-beater trampoline and the “jump harder” urgings of a 14-year-old who always wants to be “launched” higher.

I long ago gave up trying to keep nature out of this old house.  Correction: I long ago gave up trying to completely keep out the bugs and other critters. I do my best to block entry points, but there’s always a nook or a cranny in a 19th Century house that can be found by heat, food or shelter-seeking critters.

You don’t see them in action, but it seems there are house flies constantly circling the building on surveillance missions. Leave open a door for 10 seconds, perhaps while waiting for a slow-walking dog to make his or her way back inside, and you hear the insect buzz past your head. Inevitably, the bug will find its way to the bedroom to perform touch-and-goes in the dark using your face as the runway.

The living room is another popular destination for flies that successfully make the transition from outside to inside life. Here, they tend to gravitate to the blue glow of the television. I can’t count the dozens of shows and movies diminished by a fly walking across the screen, often treading rudely on the faces of Hollywood icons and ruining the fragile suspension of reality that makes movie-watching worthwhile.

On rare occasions, the presence of a fly in the TV room somehow adds to the entertainment. If a fly happens to land on the nose of a Boston Red Sox batter during a game against the Yankees, that’s worth a smile. If it bothers Derek Jeter, out comes the swatter.

However, nothing’s come close to tonight’s situation in terms of humorous irony.

The fly that decided to grace the screen during my viewing of 1986′s “The Fly” remake, starring Jeff Goldblum and Geena Davis, was one of those really, really big fellas. The word “ginormous” is terribly overused these days, but it nevertheless is a great way to describe these flies. They’re the C5 Galaxies of the fly world – huge and combersome and loud.

Yes, that dot on Jeff's right chest is a fly watching The Fly

I’ve had, in this place, bigger ginormous flies than the one that joined me to watch the movie. But my companion was still a lot bigger than your average housefly. He remained on the screen throughout the entire film, possibly growing ever more in love with Goldblum as the actor slowly morphed from a scientist with insect-like characteristics to a disgusting scientist-sized insect that most definitely needed to have its head blown to bits by the shotgun-toting Davis at the movie’s end.

My problem, right now, is that I don’t know what happened to the big bug after I turned off the TV. I can only assume it headed straight upstairs to the bedroom so it can provide the perfect 2 a.m. soundtrack to my “The Fly” induced nightmares.

Back when this township was a bit kinder and a bit gentler, the friendly guys from the road department would come around once yearly to pick-up junk too large for your regular trash. There was always much excitement in the air when the locals rallied for the annual Spring Cleanup.

Somewhere along the line, those in charge of keeping our taxes low (as if that’s even remotely possible in New Jersey) decided that it cost the town too much to have the fellows driving around and gathering Spring Cleanup items. They didn’t cancel the event, they just made it inconvenient by forcing residents to somehow lug the junk over to the disposal site.

Nevertheless, Spring Cleanup remains A Good Thing. This year, I took three Chevy Suburban loads to the Dumpsters parked behind Town Hall. (I should have left the ever-breaking Suburban there and walked home, but that’s another story.)

Too Chilly For Spring Cleanup

The highlight of this year’s gathering of the junk was my encounter with a very beautiful, and very lethargic, garter snake that was hidden under some stuff. It barely moved when I pet its cool scales. I am sure it joins me in wondering why mid-May has been so cold.

Another wildlife-related discovery: A mouse made a home in a pair of Acousti-Phase speakers I’d been storing in the basement. Right before I saw the hole that was gnawed through the front cover, I entertained the idea of putting the speakers for sale on Craigslist. The fact that the speaker had become a mouse apartment killed that idea.

It’s unlikely anybody would have bought the things anyway. I forget where they came from, but one person, writing online, contended they were sold by the infamous Crazy Eddie. He or she also named them as the worst home audio speakers ever sold:

The worst were Acousti Phase sold by Crazy Eddie in NYC back in the 70′s. They would disconnect the tweeters on JBL L100′s or put speaker upside down and then play Acousti Phase with an equalizer hidden away to improve the sound. They sold many of these speakers with Kenwood receivers which they would sell for close to dealers cost. (They made big bucks on the Acousti Phase speakers though)

I don’t know the truth of that story, but another person’s feelings about the speakers convinced me the fancy-sounding units deserved a toss into the Town Hall garbage bin:

I thought my pair were about as bad a speaker as I’ve ever heard. Even padding the tweeter down massively didn’t help. Foam suspensions on the (folded paper) woofer were surprisingly stiff, and that may have been part of the problem, but running in did nothing. Gave them away (with apologies to the recipient).

So good riddance to those mouse-eaten, good-for-nothing relics of the disco era.

The township not only stopped coming around to gather Spring Cleanup items, it also shortened the duration of the service. It used to be Spring Cleanup Week. I have a problem with there now being only three days.

We pack rats need time to gather the strength and courage necessary to throw things away. On each day of Spring Cleanup, that courage builds and more gets tossed. I’m just getting warmed-up by the third day and then, like Haley’s Comet, the Dumpsters disappear. A mouse or a snake, cowering inside some piece of junk that escaped removal, sighs with relief.

We all know that cheerleaders are supposed to be perky, happy, energetic and inspiring. They should have the attributes that make a person charismatic and memorable. However, the only cheerleader whose face I’ll ever remember is the sad one encountered a few years ago at a local high-school football game.

This girl didn’t smile the entire evening. In fact, she seemed to be on the verge of tears much of the time. She went through the cheer motions staring ahead blankly.  As her comrades did their best to convince everybody they were enjoying the shellacking being suffered by the team, the sad cheerleader remained detached, deadpan and dead serious.

I felt sorry for her, but I loved her unwillingness to be phony.

Still Wrapped and Still Unbroken

Just like I loved the Lowe’s employee I encountered yesterday. He was working the hardware area and I needed some glass to replace broken panes, including the one smashed recently by my goofball son.

My candidate for Lowe’s Employee of the Year came pretty darn close to convincing me to not buy glass from Lowe’s. “You sure you want this stuff?” he asked.

Well, I needed glass and it was glass he was in charge of providing. Although I’ve used Plexiglas, I didn’t want to go plastic, primarily because the sheet sizes were such that I’d be paying for a lot of wasted material. I just wanted four panes of cheap glass. I didn’t expect such resistance.

“I gotta tell you,” said the anti-salesman. “This is the thinnest, most fragile glass I’ve ever seen. We break it all the time, just trying to cut it.” He held up a piece, edgewise, to show me the terribly thin width of the glass. The man was amazing.

I almost took his advice, remembering the anger I felt during the winter when I cracked a new piece of Lowe’s glass while inserting a glazing point. I’d blamed myself, figuring I pushed on the pointy little tab with too much vertical, and not enough horizontal, muscle. Now, however, I figured I could blame it on the glass.

The thing is, if you’re going to talk a customer out of buying the El Cheapo glass, you should at least have some El Primo, glass to upsell. Lowe’s Fella didn’t and I figured I’d find the same paper-thin panes if I headed to Home Depot.

So, as Ian Anderson might sing, “I left there in the morning, with their glass tucked underneath my arm.” I carried the tightly-wrapped panes with incredible care. In fact, as I lifted the shatter-prone package out of the shopping cart, I probably appeared as worried as that wonderfully despondent cheerleader I’ll never forget.

On the other hand, the Lowe’s man appeared quite happy. He’d managed to cut and package the chintzy stuff without incident. “Good luck,” he said as I walked away. I swear to God, he said that.

“It’s just stuff,” said my friend. “You can’t take it with you.”

The “stuff” being mentioned didn’t include only the movable items that usually come under the “stuff” heading; the furniture, appliances, tools and other possessions that are scattered and stored everywhere. It also included the house itself. In the end, a house is just another piece of “stuff,” he asserted.

Circumstances are dictating that I put the house on the market, hence my good-intentioned friend’s desire to have me classify it as just another piece of “stuff.” I’m not sure I can fully accept such an emotionless approach to something that, for a fellow who comes up short on the Zen enlightenment scale, serves as a foundation, a marker of existence and proof of accomplishment.

But people sell houses all the time. In the end, a house – even an old one that’s been under restoration – is like pretty much everything else: a temporarily-bound collection of raw materials destined to change and change hands.

Old Walls Echo The Trampoline Giggles

This one served its purpose: It was a home where children were raised, pets were given shelter and burial, friends were entertained. Life was lived within its old walls (and inside them by heat-seeking rodents). On its patch of tilted lawn countless softballs were pitched, lacrosse balls were flung, sticks were chewed by dogs. Perimeter patches of ground were tilled and flowers were grown.

Christmas days, Thanksgiving dinners, Easter egg hunts, the highs and lows of marriage and family – the “stuff” of life – had a unique place to happen here. The yard echoed, and still does on sunny, warm days, with the laughter of kids in the pool and on the trampoline or swingset.

OK. So innumerable days were spent, and still are being spent, doing the hard work of removing layers of caked-on old paint, replacing rotted window sills and broken panes, tightening slates, mowing grass, painting/painting/repainting, sanding and hammering. I don’t think the effort was wasted time or wasted money even if it doesn’t equate into any meaningful increase in property value.

Despite periodic bouts of frustration and weariness (and a realization that the job would never be finished) the time spent fixing the old house brought pride, purpose, experience and honor. It enriched my soul even as it stole time that could have been spent on more relaxing endeavors.

I wanted the house to be perfect before putting it on the market. Clearly, that’s not going to happen. I can only say that some parts, especially the exterior walls, are in a lot better shape now than they were then. They weren’t sealed in vinyl siding. They were treated with respect.

I just have to stop worrying whether the next owners will do the same. I realize they might not. In fact, they might bulldoze the old girl. That, like the passing of time, is out of my hands.

I like to run, but I hate running on treadmills. If I’m going to exert as much energy as it takes to run, I at least want to cover some ground and go somewhere. I will never encounter black bears or see baby snakes or come across ripe blackberries while running in-place on a treadmill.

Maybe that’s why I sometimes find this house maintenance stuff discouraging. When you scrape and prime and paint something for the third time in less than seven years, the joy of accomplishment tends to fade. It becomes tantamount to running on a treadmill.

I’m beginning to feel that way about the rear deck. I went through great pains, only about three years ago, to prepare and prime and paint the fancy wood sections between the deck posts. At the time, the wood was in good condition.

Last week, I  noticed a bit of peeling paint, so out came one of the many scrapers piled up in the basement. As is usually the case with this situation, that small bit of loose paint turned out to be the tip of an iceberg.

Of Wood and Water

By the time I was finished, I found that large sections of my relatively new paint job had let loose. Even more upsetting was the fact that moisture had done a number on the quarter-round moldings. They literally crumbled when touched by the scraper.

What I’d neglected to do three years ago was seal with caulk the horizontal seam where those quarter-rounds met the vertical scrollwork sections. Water entered the unsealed crack and couldn’t escape. The constant dampness rotted the moldings and also caused the adjacent paint to let loose.

So, instead of going for a run on the next nice day, I’ll probably be climbing on the treadmill I call “fixing the deck.” It’s a form of redundant activity that uses few calories but does tend to burn through a lot of money.