photo caption: window display, parking lot, central Bayamon, PR
DATELINE: POUGHKEEPSIE, N.Y.
The house was like no other in the neighborhood. She loved books, and nearly every room was filled with volumes from floor to ceiling. He collected cameras, guns and books about the Civil War. Neighbors marveled at the tools and gadgets he had amassed through his job at I.B.M. and his evening shifts in the Sears hardware department, including six lawn mowers.
In their yard were parked two Amphicars, novelty vehicles that could drive on land and in water, of which only about 3,800 were ever produced. At a time when computers were still relatively unknown in regular homes, they had several, lined up in a room off the living room where he also kept a police and fire scanner running at all times.
“They were a married couple,” said a neighbor. “She was normal. He was not.”
Only to a next-door neighbor and close co-workers did she hint that his oddities bothered her. She told one that she disliked the house’s clutter and wished that he had not kept their dead cat frozen in their refrigerator: she dreaded opening it to cook. She complained to another of having to hand her paycheck over to him each week.
When the couple’s only son drowned after falling off the hood of one of the Amphicars in a Mississippi lake, she told a co-worker she was upset that her husband parked the same Amphicar in the driveway, a daily reminder of her grief.
“Knowing her, she tolerated it because she didn’t have the wherewithal to tell him to knock it off or I’m going to leave,” said.a co-worker.
excerpt from the newsstory:
In Cluttered Home, a Dark Secret 3 Decades Old
By VIVIAN YEE
THE NEW YORK TIMES
Jan Galligan
75Grand/Sur
Santa Olaya, PR
http://JANGuarte.posthaven.com [art blog]
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