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My son Gavin and his fiance Chelsea bought a house together last year around this time. Early Spring. Since then they’ve replaced the roof, HVAC, renovated the flooring, removed dangerous towering Georgia pines, and what seems like a thousand other upgrades. Much of it, themselves. Home ownership is a lot of work.

Inspired by some of their blank walls I decided to unpack and unroll hundreds, yes, hundreds of my father’s oil paintings. I knew there would be some treasures in that bin. I just needed to take the time to explore. It seems that sometime near the end of his life he ran out of room to store them on their stretcher bars, so he decided to remove the canvases, catalog and stack each painting with a sheet of parchment paper between each. He then rolled them up, attaching a index card with a number and description of each.

Many looked unfinished, lacking his signature detail. I couldn’t tell if he simply got bored with the composition or that these were painted later in life when his eyesight wasn’t as sharp. Some were damaged. Paint chipping off leaving gaps of blank canvas. A couple were almost primitive, giving them a very modern abstract look. Others were studies of other artists works. Many were of the deteriorating farm buildings and equipment left abandoned in the fields of the old Bigalow homestead. Of these, the above water pipe painting titled “Aunt Ruth’s Water” caught my eye. A very nice detail of the mesmerizing flow of natural spring water into the tub that sat along side Bigelow Road across from the old farmhouse. The original old oak tub (which supplied free, fresh natural artisan spring water to locals for centuries) was a favorite subject matter of my dad’s. I believe he painted it at least 25 times. I remember as a child sitting on Aunt Ruth’s and Uncle John’s front porch watching cars pull up and folks getting out with gallon jugs to fill. Aunt Ruth loved it because it brought a stream of visitors to chat with. My grandmother Lilian told me that people believed the water had healthy minerals that attributed to the Bigalow family’s reputation of long active lives. I will say I do remember its clean, ice cold taste when I drank directly from that pipe in the painting. Late in the 1980s the old oak tub finally had to be replaced with a corrugated steel pasture trough, which is what the above painting shows. Oak or steel, people still came by to fill their jugs.

Of all those paintings, most were of flowers. As I’ve written here before, my dad would grow vegetables and flowers in the Spring and Summer and then oil paint during the harsh Adirondack Winters. I selected three paintings that I thought would look good together on a large, blank wall in Gavin and Chelsea’s new home’s entry way. One, of Stargazer lilies was quite long and large and the other two to accompany it on the left and right. They were a little dusty and the pigment was dulling but I knew all they needed was a little t.l.c.

After a couple trips to area art supply stores I managed to find milled stretcher bars in the appropriate lengths. Out came my canvas pliers and staple gun and the re-stretching began. Next was painting the edges black, and once dry, application of the miracle color-restorer Liquin, a Winsor & Newton product resembling a medium-gloss varnish that makes color pop off the canvas as it must have when the oils were still wet. I’ve used it several times before to successfully bring poorly-stored canvases back to life.

All in all it took a couple of days to complete, the last task being the installation of picture wire for hanging (I imagine if I did more of this kind of work I’d get faster at it.) I found myself smiling while concentrating on aligning and truing stretcher bar corners while being careful not to tear the fragile old canvas. I fell into a zen-like trance while working on these “restorations.” The smell of mineral spirits and wet oil paint unlocked feelings long forgotten and the nostalgia of my youth flooded through me. For a little while my dad was brought back to life in my mind. Along with invigorating memories of my childhood years, cool Adirondack breezes, blue skies and the sparkling view of the big lake, the Green Mountains of Vermont and even further off in the distance, the White Mountains of New Hampshire. Memories that have me smiling even as I write this.

While cleaning up and organizing one of the many boxes of old photos I happened across my late Uncle Ted’s baby book. He was born July 11, 1927 in Danbury, Connecticut according to his 1945 World War II draft card (he had just turned 18 years old.) Interesting to me, his last name was still spelled Bigalow at that time, so my grandmother Lillian Smith Bigelow’s influence on changing the spelling had not happened yet. I suspect the spelling change happened some time after she started her subscription to the Bigelow Society genealogical newsletter (several old copies were also in that trove of old, dusty boxes I found in the attic of 5 Bigelow Road.) Or maybe she happened across some Bigelow Tea at the grocery store. Who really knows what drove the change? I do remember clearly hearing my mother say that grandma changed the spelling because Bigalow was the ignorant spelling of the name. Whatever the catalyst, it’s lost to time now.

I had sent the baby book as well as a stack of glassine envelopes filled with old photos of Uncle Ted, Aunt Joyce and my young cousins from early, happy days in and around Port Henry and Westport, New York to my cousin Barbara Bigelow Stevenson, the eldest from that side of the family.

All this surname spelling nonsense got me to thinking about our family names in general. My Uncle Ted, or Ted Jr., was named after his father, Theodore Roosevelt Bigelow, born in August of 1898, who was named after the great president, Rough Rider, avid outdoorsman and ardent proponent of conservation. Roosevelt spent some time hunting and fishing in the Adirondacks and is pretty much responsible for the designation of the Adirondack Park in 1892. Still the largest National Park in the U.S.A. today. Evidently the Park’s formation was viewed as a positive by his parents, my great grandparents, Frank and Irene. That or they just ran out of ideas for names for babies. (They had 15 kids. Fifteen?!?!)

Uncle Ted’s middle name was Orrin, which was my grandmother’s (his mother) father’s first name. Orrin William Smith of Sullivan, Pennsylvania.

Today the name Theodore Bigelow is somewhere north of it’s fifth or maybe sixth generation. Like the Energizer Bunny, there’s no stopping the name in the family.

On my mother’s side, the O’Brien’s, pretty much stuck to Irish traditional naming patterns, which is the first son named for the father’s father. The second son named for the mother’s father. Third son named for the father. Fourth son named for the father’s eldest brother. It was this pattern that allowed me to discover the long lost O’Brien son that had traveled West in the late 1800s. Patrick Jr. headed out West with some money and photo portraits of his mom, Mary Starr O’Brien and dad, Patrick Henry O’Brien. Evidently the Cleveland, Ohio area was West enough for him where he became, wait for it, a cop. Seemingly another Irish tradition.

Then along comes my father, breaking all tradition. Galen Edward Bigelow, to whom this website and blog are dedicated too, used to introduce himself to strangers as the “Boy named Sue.” I know this because I personally witnessed it many times.

My grandmother must have loved the meaning of the name. Intelligence. After the famous Greek mathematician and scientist Claudius Galen, whose theory on illness was that it was an imbalance of the four humours: blood, phlegm, black bile and yellow bile. We have him to thank for bloodletting, which certainly was responsible for thinning the herd back in the day.

Reading through my Grandmother Lillian’s dairy from 1945 she repeatedly refers to my dad as “Gay”. “Gay did this.” or “Gay did that.” “Gay went off to the Army.”

Not that there’s anything wrong with that. :~)

But, man oh man, my dear father suffered for it his whole life.

And like Sue in the Johnny Cash song, Galen’s life was shaped by living up to, or in spite of, his name.

And I answered. We all expected that the pandemic holidays were going to be different but I never expected I’d be experiencing them COVID-19 positive, in quarantine, while being slowly roasted by endless mean-spirited political TV advertising. The special U.S. Senate January 5th election for both seats for Georgia has turned the nation’s, and maybe the world’s, attention to the outcome. Money has poured into both sides with the result being all TV inventory bought up 24/7. The only escape is the streaming services, well, some of them. Certainly not YouTube.

The past year was already guaranteed a place in infamy worldwide, but now it’s gotten personal. Especially after I made it this far, virus free. Universal distribution of the vaccine is still months away, but at least it’s in sight. And I had hopes of making it to my day of inoculation. That is until I was exposed during my “holiday” haircut. My barber texted me 24 hours later to inform me of her sudden loss of taste and smell. A drive through test confirmed my fear and sure enough today, sixteen days after exposure, I too have lost my sense of taste and smell, have a foggy feeling, fatigue and a mild headache. Thankfully, no fever.

I was literally just coming out of what turned out to be a successful back surgery, having just completing the first 6 weeks of physical therapy when the virus struck. Of course the back surgery was another high-low-light of the past year. There’s no doubt that the cleaning and clearing of 5 Bigelow Road had a heavy hand in the cause. Debilitating sciatica struck in early June, which quickly expanded into bursitis in my left hip. Non-invasive treatments and an epidural steroid injection failed and surgery was scheduled for September 10th.

While performing the laminectomy the surgeon nicked my spine, causing a loss of fluid, so my outpatient surgery resulted in an overnight stay, flat on my back, in the hospital under observation. Coming out of anesthesia was especially confusing since I was expecting to see my wife Kim ready to take me home. I had no cell phone, no eyeglasses, no clothes and no wedding ring (a whole other issue that’s never resolved itself). The line phone in the room was dead. It would be 4 hours before someone was able to tell me what happened.

Upon getting home my trick knee buckled and I immediately fell onto the floor. Which set off the worst sciatica attack of all, so bad that I was convinced that I had cracked my hip. I could not sit without searing pain and spasms. After several days of this, and having mastered the art of executing bowel movements while upright, an Medrol Dose Pak calmed the spasms while a shot in the hip killed the bursitis. The knee was still weak, but physical therapy has since worked wonders as well as getting in my 10,000 steps a day.

So, here I am counting my blessings on December 30th feeling like I made it through 2020 mostly intact. My income is down 30% from my earlier projections, but hell, we sold my mom’s house. My immediate family is healthy and happy. The right candidate won the Presidential election. I make my Trumpenstein father-in-law uncomfortable. I’m starting to enjoy the flexibility of semi-retirement. I’ve got a couple of fun video projects going. Life’s good.

This is a little off topic for this blog. With the Adirondack house and farm all sold, I’ve time to ponder other issues that have had an impact on my life. Especially now while I am convalescing after my recent back surgery. Which was certainly brought on by all the lifting, scrubbing and lugging I suffered while clearing out the old house.

During the late 90’s and early 2000’s I was totally consumed, infatuated, and devoted to Lance Edward Armstrong. My wife and I traveled to Paris three times to watch him finish 3 of his 7 Tour de France Yellow Jersey wins. We stayed in the same hotel with him, his then girlfriend Sheryl Crow and comedian Robin Williams, who too, was an big fan of Lance. I strived for access. My company, Bigelow Advertising, signed up for pro bono work promoting the Tour de Georgia for five years straight. We got to meet, dine and chat with all the pros. Floyd Landis, Tyler Hamilton, Georgie Hincapie, Chris Horner, David Zabriskie, Levi Leipheimer, Jonathan Vaughters and many others became household names. The Tour de France played endlessly in my company’s lobby. I collected memorabilia , lanyards and VIP passes, jerseys that my company had designed, books and magazines, etc. I was all in. All in.

The good part was that I also rode my bike. I took spin classes. I rode group charity rides. I became the best rider I could be. Maybe a little old, but I never was more fit in my life.

I supported the Lance Armstrong Foundation. I wore and gave away those yellow rubber bracelets by the hundreds to friends, family and clients. When my brother David was fighting cancer I could not buy and distribute enough of them.

Then in 2006 Floyd Landis was stripped of his Tour de France win. After years of denial, he finally admitted to continual doping, also revealing that Armstrong and many other top riders systematically doped as well.

At first I didn’t believe any of it. I went to a Free Floyd event. Donated money. He signed my jersey. I bought his book, “Positively False”. Then I had a beer with him.

It was later, after I watched Lance’s 2013 Oprah Winfrey pity-fest, where he finally came clean, when it finally sunk in. I was completely crestfallen.

I struggled with this. For a long time. So much so that I tossed out my little 2 1/2″ painted lead action figure of Lance in his U.S. Postal kit as recently as 2 months ago.

So why am I writing about this now? Yesterday, the New York Times published an exclusive. “Trump’s Taxes Show Chronic Losses and Years of Tax Avoidance.” This “emperor has no clothes” revelation struck me very much like my reaction to the Floyd Landis’ 2006 Tour de France win/lost.

Like I was, Trump supporters are polarized in their faith. Impossible to reason with. Very much like my former hero-worship of the Lance Armstrong/U.S. Postal Cycling Team fairy tale. I say fairy tale because it all was a manufactured lure that I and many others swallowed hook, line and sinker.

Unfortunately the election is less than a month away. It took me years to shake it off, see and accept the truth. Slowly I discarded all my collected memorabilia; signed jerseys and caps, posters, books, magazines, etc. The whole thing was fake. Lance was a hoax. A liar and a cheat.

A lot like the man who currently occupies the White House.

Even if he loses this election those supporters will still wave the Trump flags, wear those red MAGA ball caps, and chant “Hoax”, “Election Fraud”, “Lock him/her up” and whatever other nonsense he feeds them via Twitter after his defeat.

Eventually the hero-worship hold will give way. Truth will slowly seep into the Twitter-written fairy tale. And after some time, say a decade or so, the Trump-train will completely disappear. Like Lance’s 7 TdF wins. Erased.

The Covid-19 pandemic is well into it’s 6th month and looks like it’s going to be around for another 6 before we can get a vaccine for it. I haven’t sat next to my mother in all that time, sadly because she lives less that 6 minutes away. On the upside, she’s finally participating in many of the activities that the assisted living facility offers. “I won at Bingo!” she announced during our call yesterday.

Like so many, I’ve taken up gardening this summer. Tomatoes, peppers, squash, basil, mint and every other herb known to grow well in Georgia’s hot summer sun. My wife, Kim has already used many in her daily cooking. Salsa Frita, Chile Rellenos, Kimchi, Caprese and thyme and tarragon stuffed red snapper just to name a few from the past week.

There’s something to be said about the calming effect and sense of anticipation that a little garden brings. And evidently I am not the only one to have discovered this nugget of survival during times of duress. Victory gardens are a necessity of survival during war, but they also bring peace to those who plant and tend them. Many have said that this COVID 19 pandemic is a war of sorts. Because of this, good plants, pots and fertilizers are currently nowhere to be found. The shelves of the outdoor and gardening centers resemble grocery store paper product aisles. Empty. Tomato stakes and Viva paper towels are both unobtainium in today’s world.

I suspect my father got a lot of pleasure from his gardening. The dark, rich soil of the Champlain Valley pushed up and out everything from garlic, onions, potatoes, corn, green beans, English peas, along with tomatoes and peppers during its short growing season. I remember being amazed at the size of his squash and pumpkins he’d wheelbarrow out of the garden.

Today there’s hardly any evidence of the large garden plot that dad kept for so many years behind the house. He plowed it under, leveled it and planted grass. I remember being concerned that he abruptly stopped gardening, fearing at that time that it was a sign of his impending demise.

Thankfully, that wasn’t the case. He lived at least another 10 years, driving his rider mower over the new lawn he had created. Later I realized that the destruction of the garden happened at the same time my cousins sold the house upon the hill that used to belong to my Uncle Ted. My dad’s garden was on his deceased brother’s property! When it sold to a third party, he quickly erased it. It also was about this time that my father’s attention turned to growing flowers in front of his house, on his property. And as I have said before, he grew a lot. Gladiolus, Stargazers, Chrysanthemums, Lilies, Dahlias, Crocus, you name it, he grew it.

They’re all gone now. Every now and then one tough bulb that made it through the winter may pop up as a faint reminder of what used to be.

Hopefully the current contract on the house will close. The money will help my mother continue to live in worry-free comfort around the corner from my home. We all can’t wait to be able to go out to lunch together again. Maybe go for a Sunday drive up in the mountains. There’s parts of North Georgia that resemble the Adirondacks. I know she’d love that.

It’s been a little over two and a half years since I made the phone call where I learned of my father’s death from my shaken, disoriented mother. I had called because one of my cousins contacted me to say that one of their friends had seen an ambulance in front of 5 Bigelow Road the day before, around 5 am. 36 hours had passed since my dad had died in the E-town hospital. My mother had been sitting in her recliner when I called. Dazed. She was not with him when he died, wisely choosing to stay home as they drove off to the hospital in the ambulance.

Today my mother is safe and comfortable in an assisted living community literally 5 minutes from my front door. I had been visiting her three to four times a week until the COVID-19 pandemic shut down practically everything, everywhere. Over the past months I’ve been able to see her from afar, participating in a Mother’s Day “Mardi Gras”-style drive by parade, with colorful “Miss You Mom” banners, and later through closed windows assisted with cellphones to speak. Digital technology has been helpful during these times of isolation, allowing many to communicate and continue work through Facetime, Zoom meetings, etc. But to those who are not in the least digital natives the transition has not been smooth or even welcomed. Mom’s hearing is deteriorating and the small, “senior-friendly” mobile phone we gave her was not helping. Conversations had pretty much turned into, “How are you doing?” “Whaa?” she’d reply. “Can you hear me?” “Yes” she’d reply. “Do you need anything?” “Yes,” she’d reply. “OK, what?” “Yes,” she’d reply. A frustrating exchange for both parties, I can assure you.

My wife, Kim, found a landline phone that not only features large numbered buttons and programmable speed dial but an incoming volume amplifier. Despite the pandemic lock down we were able to have it installed and it works! Mom can hear, but still doesn’t have a lot to say.

She spends most of her days buried in Word Search puzzle books, of which I struggle to keep her in fresh supply. They can’t publish the damn things fast enough. I continue to drop off “Care” packages of microwave popcorn, bottled water, chocolate, etc. But even when I could visit her face to face, her melancholy weights heavy. Her eyes quietly look at me and I feel this immense sense of guilt. “I’m stuck in here because of you” she seems to silently say.

I don’t know if it’s my imagination, my sense of helplessness, the anxiety of the pandemic or just maybe I am interpreting her quiet stares accurately.

As much as we have prodded her to get more involved in community activities she requires someone to physically coerce her to participate. Thankfully there are a couple professionals in her community that excel at this. Mom proudly shows off her jewelry projects like a 7 year old. I only wish that she’d do more with what her care givers offer. In the meantime I’ll shake off the guilt. It sucks to be the last of your generation. You’ve seen so many of your friends and family pass before you. As the John Prine song says, “Old people just grow lonesome.” (Sadly, John was, as of this post, one of the 100,000 victims of the still active virus.)

So happy or not, she’s settled. And that settles it.

Now mom’s old house, the house that refuses to be sold, is under contract again. With brighter prospects of actually closing this time around. Two and a half years ago it was jam packed and filled to the brim with two cars, a new rider mower, a portable generator and the possessions of several bygone generations. Gathering mountains of dust. Dozens of ferry trips back and forth across Lake Champlain to Vermont, where the closest Good Will in South Burlington stood. Dozens of trips to the dump in Mineville, where the attendants rummaged through my bagged up junk for Yearbooks and imitation floral arraignments. Drawers packed with old jack knives, bullets, coins, TV remote controls, VHS tapes, mismatched flatware, screws, bolts, nails, hundreds of keys, costume jewelry, receipts, letters and holiday cards. And lots of really useless stuff. Haystacks of soiled and dirty clothes. Rotary telephones, ancient and heavy farm and road construction-related tools, outdated canned goods, inoperable appliances, dented and cracked cookware, knick-knacks and the detritus of lives lived.

The house now sits completely empty. Rugs and linoleum cut and hauled out, with a brand new heating system complements of the failed furnace fiasco of the past winter. Reflecting back, the effort seems Herculean.

Social distancing has made orchestrating a remote closing a challenge. Dropping off P.O.A. and related documents at the front door of mom’s assisted living community for her signature and return, trip after trip to the post office to send them Certified Mail.

If this sale goes through, I will be finally finished with the old homestead. All the property will have been sold. No more Moriah School taxes. No more Town of Moriah property taxes. No more frustrating calls about failed water pumps, floods, snow removal, lawn care, and fuel oil. The financial ties to the Adirondacks will all have been severed. Family ties will remain. I’ve several cousins who have chosen to remain in those mountains and along the big lake. I understand why. I do miss the air. Clean, bracing and energizing. It really is one of the last best places.

But for me it’s lights out and please lock the door when you leave.

“You can’t go back home again.” Thomas Wolfe’s posthumous 1940 novel pretty much summed it up. Memories versus reality rarely if ever live up to your anticipation. And reality is hardly ever as satisfying as those cherished memories. Our lives move along at a pretty good clip, but every now and then we stop to ponder where we’ve been, take out those nuggets to mull over, savor and enjoy all over again. Sometimes in our dreams.

The current unprecedented government ordered social distancing, shutdown and lock up has given quite a few of us plenty of time to wax nostalgic. The entire world has hit the pause button. A sign that it might also be a good idea to rewind and play back what led us to where we are now.

The past year has been a jumble for me. Between work, planning on retirement, chasing down VA benefits for my mother, resettling her in the South and settling her business up North have all added up to too many tasks to remember. Within that blur sits her former home, the house that refuses to be sold. Back on the market for what, the fourth time? Now with a new and improved heating system and repaired water pump.

We’re also back in the process of trying to sell my last toe hold on the Adirondacks, a final acre of the old homestead that I impulsively bought well over a decade ago. I had dreamed of building a post and beam cabin with that million dollar view of Lake Champlain someday. But that day has never showed itself.

Seems that good old Uncle John and Aunt Ruth had a downstate drinking buddy that they sold an acre of prime property to for a single dollar. He never built the house that they must have discussed over way too much Genesee beer. The property went to his estate at his passing. The for sale sign rubbed me the wrong way so I bought the land back. For a considerable amount more than the original sale price. Not exactly a wise investment, but it felt good at the time.

Now all that has come to an abrupt halt. The feeling good part as well as everything else. The virus has put the country in an uneven panic. Conflicting information reigns supreme: what’s open, what’s not, what’s safe, what’s right and what’s wrong. Calvin ball rules, poor governmental leadership at the highest levels, panic-induced shortages (toilet paper, paper towels. Really?) “Don’t wear a mask.” Save them for the first responders. “Wear a mask.” But not a medical grade one. “Be sure to get out and exercise.” Public paths and parks closed. “Practice social distancing.” Georgia beaches and the Atlanta belt-line, an urban linear park, are open.

The world has gotten smaller. Way smaller. Prison cell small for some. My mother Rosemary has been isolated in her room at her assisted living facility over 3 weeks now. (Okay, a nice prison cell, like the one where Bernie Madoff and Michael Cohen live.) They closed the communal dining room, stopped all activities and are bringing meals to the residents. She has a cellphone, but her hearing has made our calls “what?” sessions. Frustrating for both her and me. Unfortunately her ENT cleaning was scheduled the day her facility shut down to outside visitors. They told me if I took her out, she couldn’t come back. We are now waiting to reschedule, but it looks like that’s at least another month away. Likely longer.

On the bright side our last face to face with mom included my late brother’s oldest son, Edward and two great grandchildren, Ryder and Ahna. Two of Ed’s sister Patty’s children. We all went out to lunch together to mom’s favorite Chick-fil-a, which she calls Chicken Filet, no matter how many times you correct her.

I’ve written her letters and dropped off care packages with “underwear” and Word Search puzzle books. She’s likely due for a chocolate resupply. But she may have to tough it out without. My wife refuses to let me go to the grocery store, or worst yet Dollar Tree where I buy Mom’s Word Search books, face mask or not. Kim sits at her computer these days to do our grocery shopping. And then complains about (a) the length of time before the delivery actually happens and (b) the quality of the produce our “personal shopper” selects for us. And you have to be precise when ordering groceries online. Those who are putting themselves at risk to keep us fed are a literal lot. Yesterday a friend ordered 8 bananas. She got 8 bunches. I can only imagine what that shopper was thinking. “These folks must either have chimpanzees or a serious potassium deficiency.”

Book lovers and readers have stumbled into an unexpected boon. Time is indeed on our well-washed hands. The Adirondacks has long inspired artistic and literary types. The raw beauty, as well as raw climate, has drawn in some of the most talented and controversial, typically with out-of-popular-alignment political beliefs and sympathies. Rockwell Kent, Georgia O’Keeffe, Marsden Hartley, Winslow Homer, W.B. Evans, Russell Banks, Sloan Wilson, Burton Bernstein, Harold Weston, and others. Surprisingly even Ian Fleming set his “The Spy Who Loved Me” in the Adirondack Park.

I’ve been using my pandemic time out to catch up on many of the books that feature the people, artists and authors mesmerized by these mountains. These books, like my last acre of Adirondack property, were snapped up impulsively over my lifetime. I’d always hoped that someday I’d have the time to actually read them. So far they’ve proven to be a far better investment than the property, and without the annual school and property taxes.

After moving my mother South, the next item of business was preparing the old house for sale. It’s construction was a family affair back between 1969 – 1970. I’ve faint memories of swinging a hammer at wall studs, mashing my thumb. The property was owned by my Uncle Ted, adjacent to the old family farm on Bigalow Hill. They measured off an 1/3 acre parcel and started to dig the daylight cellar. Concrete blocks were the material of choice at the time, and probably not the ideal, since the North Country suffers some fairly deep freezes and dramatic thaws.

Today the address is 5 Bigelow Road. The county renamed the road from whatever it was sometime in the 1990s. Many grumbled that it should have been named Bigalow Road, after the Bigalow Hill clan, but as they say, the winners (or survivors) write history, so Bigelow Hill it is.

My very first showing of the still-jam-packed house happened during my second trip up in late Fall 2018. Under one of the beds I had found a large piggy bank full to the top with coins. After walking into the bank in Port Henry I learned they had no change-sorting machine. Piggy weighted about 60 lbs. and would be too heavy to pack and fly back to Atlanta. Likely cost more to transport than it contained. So I asked the bank teller if there were any charities where I could donate it’s contents. She suggested the Chamber of Commerce which was literally across the street.

Mrs. Sprague of the Chamber was delighted with the donation, which went to paying for hot chocolate and cookies in my father’s memory at the upcoming Christmas parade. I told her my story, about my dad’s passing and my mom’s relocation South to my home and that I was up preparing, cleaning, and clearing out their old house for sale. I mentioned that it was small, old, in need of some repairs with zero curb appeal.

I had been back at the house for two hours when there was a knock on the front door. I was waiting for a real estate agent from Lake George Village so I assumed she was a little early for our meeting. No, surprise! It was a friend of Mrs. Sprague of the Chamber, who had stopped by after I had left. Sprague told her my story. She and her husband were in the market for a starter home for their recently divorced daughter and could she come inside and take a look around?

After a brief cell phone call, her husband drives up 10 minutes later and does a quick inspection. I point out the less obvious areas in need of repair or replacement. They do a quick pow wow in his truck and come back into the house. “Would you take an earnest money check for $5,000?”

“Why yes!” I said, startled by my good luck. “Great. My checkbook is in the truck. I will be right back,” he said, leaving the missus to chat further with me.

Moments later we hear him running back up the basement stairs. “Tom! Tom! Come quick!”

The 4″ copper U-joint connecting the septic system to the bathroom had split and was vomiting sewage into the carport.

“What did you do?!?” I said.

Well, that wasn’t appreciated. They left. I spent two more days cleaning up, arraigned for the repairs, and flew back home empty handed. Additionally, the real estate agent was a no show. House: one. Me: zero.

Fast forward 9 months later. I had gotten most of the repairs completed, with the exception of the unsightly bulging berm in the front of the house, partially blocking the garage door. But there’s a contract on the house! Not anywhere near our asking price, but I just didn’t want to spend another Adirondack winter paying for heating fuel to keep the place intact.

Then the closing is delayed. And then delayed some more. But finally a date is agreed too. The dead of Winter is quickly approaching, so the timing couldn’t be more critical.

Then the weekend before the closing my real estate agent calls. “Tom, the carpeting throughout the house is soaked and there’s water everywhere in the basement.” “Shit,” I am certain was my response. A couple hours later the local plumber calls to tell me that the boiler failed, the subzero temperatures froze the system, and the flood was a result of the thaw.

I call my go-to handy man and he cuts the carpets out and hauled them to the dump. My real estate agent’s husband placed an 8 foot electric heater in the basement next to the water pump to prevent any further damage. My other go-to handy man placed a dehumidifier upstairs to keep mold and mildew from forming.

The closing is called off. The house wins round two. This place just doesn’t want to be sold.

We had flown up to Albany, New York to rent a van to load up and drive south with anything of emotional, historic or financial value before we closed up the old house. I soon learned that the fifteen photo albums that I had discovered on my second trip up under the living room sofa were just the tip of the ice berg. We found another dozen under one of the beds and yet another box full of albums and old sepia and tin types in the attic. All in, there were fifty+ photo albums scattered throughout my parents house. Additionally, my father had an entire dresser drawer stuffed with 5″ x 7″ envelopes of his own personal photography, most being photos to document his many paintings, flowers he grew and tended as well pictures of the seagulls he used to feed in front of the house. (A practice he gave up after realizing that highly acidic seagull poop will eventually destroy asphalt shingles and damage a rooftop. I don’t know if his neighbor, Art Walch, ever realized it was my dad’s fault that he had to replace his roof twice. I suspect not. I do know that it finally dawned on my father because he told me so.)

Kim and I then stacked all the photo albums and boxes of old photos in the living room which had become a staging area. Wow. That’s going to take up a lot of real estate in the van, I thought. Then we vacuumed, dusted and wiped down each and moved them, one by one, to the kitchen table where we started selecting and removing images, tossing the keepers into a bag. Left behind were the old photo albums themselves as well as photos damaged beyond recognition, duplicates and some entire volumes of photos that we or my brothers and their families had sent to my parents over the years of which we were sure there were copies.

Over this past weekend I moved the photos from the bag into a lidded box, inspecting each one before stacking them on top of each other. Many of the older images, mostly sepia prints on heavy stock and presented in dark brown or grey aged and embossed folders or sleeves, were of people I did not recognize. Even the few that had inscriptions scribbled on their backs were names that I did not recognize. I suspect old friends and cousins of my great grand parents whose memories have faded away with their passing.

Of course there were plenty of pictures of people, places and things that I did recognize or remember. I spent some time reflecting on my Uncle Ted Jr., my dad’s older brother. As well as his wife, Joyce and their children. My first cousins. I spent many childhood weekends with them where we’d all converge on my grandparent’s house in Port Henry. Memories of the public beach, within easy walking distance from my grandmother’s, where we’d stand goggle-eyed watching French Canadian’s as the men would change out of their Speedo, nut sack bathing suits on the beach in full view of everybody. Typically the women would wrap a beach towel around themselves first. Sometimes the towel would slip. The tease to a 10 year old boy was unbearable. The mystery solved the next summer while I was chasing my younger cousin Teddy, whom we called Teddy Bear, back and forth in the Lady’s Bathhouse. I ran straight, face first into his healthy Aunt Hannah’s bold black bush while she was changing into her bathing suit in one of the stalls at the end of the hall. My first full frontal naked adult woman that wasn’t my mother. The image still stubbornly in my head a half century later.

I remember early Beatles, the Rascals, Herman’s Hermits and Paul Revere and the Raiders playing from the speaker on top of the telephone pole near the concession stand. I remember walking up the hill to the old penny candy store, and going out after toweling off to Gene’s Michigan Hot Dog stand for dinner. Which, by the way, still stands and still serves, in season, amazingly consistent Michigan hot dogs.

There were photos of my grandmother as a young woman, and an album that belonged to her while she was in her teens. Photos of the old Smith family farm in Pennsylvania and the big house in Port Henry with the double decked porches and giant old oak in the front. The tree I was standing under when my mother came out the front door to announce that Jack Ruby had just shot Lee Harvey Oswald.

My uncle Ted Jr. standing next to his Dodge convertible in front of the Samuel D. Champlain monument next to the big bridge to Vermont, my dad loading an M1 rifle in Iceland, Uncle John sitting next to me and my older cousin Barbara, wearing my cowboy hat and holding my two cap pistols, a tall and thin Aunt Joyce standing on a rock next to the lake. And many, many more. Each photo holds a story. And there are a lot of photos. Making countless stories. Or maybe they are all part of just one, long continuing story.