Expressway: After 38 years, a house is suddenly history
The house in Port Jefferson Station where J.B. McGeever lived with his parents. Credit: McGeever family photo
My parents' ranch-style house in Port Jefferson Station was almost empty. Before the bank would take possession in a foreclosure the next day, its contents were being sold off piece by piece in a tag sale.
Strangers shuffled through rooms, eyeballing furniture and knickknacks. My dad oversaw the sale. My mother couldn't bear it, so I came to pick her up.
I parked by the mailbox and waited in my car. Were I to wander inside a houseful of strangers, my instinct would be to start tossing bodies like a crazed bouncer. I gripped the wheel and stared out the window.
I was my mother's only child and knew why she was taking so long to come outside. She was saying goodbye to the place after 38 years, peeking inside rooms, waving to the birds she fed each morning. I was hoping for a quick escape, but I waited -- and studied the property from the car.
That cherry blossom in the middle of the yard was a housewarming gift from my great-grandmother. Just beyond its branches was the window to my bedroom, where I dreamt awfully big and at age 16 suffered my first hangover.
My mother would come home late from her shift as a waitress, doggie bag in one hand, wad of tips in the other. One night she held the money up to the light and said, "Remember those football cleats you wanted?"
On the opposite side of the house was where Major, the family Great Dane, died of lung cancer in my arms in the living room.
Beside the refrigerator sat our old red rotary phone. One particular call shook the entire house. I was driving a cab part time while a student at Stony Brook University when I was attacked by a couple of passengers in Centereach.
"Dad, can you get out here?" I said to him on the phone.
I don't know how he drove those five miles so fast, but I remember him pounding the back of the ambulance within minutes.
When I was younger and still capable of hero worship, I would track down the haunts of great authors, their houses, pubs and hotels. It took me years to come to my senses, realizing that I was staring at nothing. I didn't want that to happen with our house. Once my mother got inside the car, we would pull away forever.
In time she emerged for the last time, carrying her luggage. I took her bag.
"Have they picked us clean yet?" I asked.
My dad smiled. "It's just crap," he said, "a bunch of junk we don't need. We're movin' on, pal. This is a good thing."
She and Dad would soon be heading for retirement in Florida.
With the three of us outside and the place crawling with strangers, the house began to look foreign.
Across the street was a neighbor's home. I always wondered what they thought of us. Over the decades they'd seen me fly over handlebars, jump off the roof, and streak naked across the lawn on a dare.
Shouldn't we leave something behind for folks to remember us? Maybe a plaque?
I imagined it would say: "The Embattled McGeevers slept here from 1973-2011. The parents had moments good and bad, and their kid was wild beyond reason. But they loved each other hard, and survived the whole thing."
