Forrestal Village

Mel, Donna, Dale, and Cathy lived here. (The name is pronounced "forest all," but looks like a different word when spelled like that.)

This is the house where Cathy first lived. One of my early impressions includes a night when Mom, playing cards with Dad and another male friend (who may have had a wife that doesn't figure into my recollections), took ill and had to be carried "fireman style" (which does NOT mean slung over a back; two people cross-link their hands to form a seat; easier done than described, I'm finding). When I described the episode, Mom agreed that I might actually be remembering the night Cathy decided to arrive.

Another memory is walking in front of a young lady who was swinging. I ended up with a face full of blood, as head wounds tend to flow freely. It took several stitches across the bridge of my nose (and it took two corpsmen to hold me down to get those stitches), which scar is still there, cleverly hidden by my glasses (and natural wrinkles), to staunch the flow.

My final recollection is the day we were moving. Apparently it was winter, since the front stoop (it was too short and small to be called a porch) was icy. My job was to throw the empty milk jug away. (Can that be right? Didn't those things have deposits on them? And don't tell me you didn't know milk came in bottles with deposits!) Every time I approached the trash can, my feet slipped out from under me.

Mom recalls the time the neighbors upstairs (I didn't even know there was an upstairs; my memories were very limited of those early houses) had their pipes break. During exceptionally cold weather, water pipes can freeze. When the water freezes, it expands. (Actually, the expansion begins at 4 degrees above zero; I imagine that's Celsius, but chemistry class was a long, long time ago.) Such expansion breaks the pipes. That's not too messy until, as always happens, the water thaws. In this case, no one was home upstairs, and the leak went undetected until the water had made a trail through our unit, soaking about half the floor, as I understood the description.