It must’ve been about 1980 when my parents first bought their home. Next store to them lied this ranch, which at the time, was an ugly grayish blue. The back porch was especially unsafe, being nothing more than a slab of concrete below the door, unlike it is now. The house was a small house, it had only a few necessary rooms on its only floor, including a connected garage and a basement beneath.

It must’ve been in the 1960's when the first family moved into this house. The husband was on the board of education for the elementary schools in the area, and the wife held a job in Queens. They spent out their lives in the house and moved out in about 1974. Come 1974, another younger couple moved in. Viola and Frank Grimes, a dysfunctional marriage was what they shared. Viola and Frank had no children, in fact, Viola hated children, as well as the hatred she shared for her husband. Frank was a casual guy who often talked for long hours with my father against this same small, white, metal fence, which at the time was black in color. I cant say I remember much about Frank's appearance, but I remember he always was an outgoing person towards us, he'd let us barrow many things from him, he’d allow me and my brother to play in his backyard, but all this ended on a warm afternoon in 1986.

Viola was returning home from her friends house when she found the garage door taped shut. After vigorous work, she got it open to find Frank seated in his car, whose engine was running. To her surprise, Frank had committed suicide in the very garage shown in the picture.

That year went by fast, as Viola, who we now referred to as Aunt Viola, lived alone in her house. News had surfaced that she had recently inherited a rather large sum of money, which was all aptly placed in her bank account. As her health declined, the grim house grew darker and darker. Ill never forget that dark summer evening in 1994 when myself and my family were all seated around in my dining room watching TV when the phone rang. It was Viola's daughter requesting that my father check up on her mother. My dad walked through the door in the fence(now covered by those green bushes), and rang her doorbell. He got no answer. Being in such a good relationship with his neighbor, he had acquired a key to her house, which he then proceeded to open the door with. He walked through the foyer and into the living room, and there was Viola, seated in her favorite chair, watching her favorite baseball team on TV, dead.

The coroner told us that her heart medication had failed, and till this day, my dad still thinks otherwise.

The house was then vacant for about a year as no one had found it a good deal to step up and buy, until a very young family bought it in 1995. Vinney and his wife, whose name has slipped my mind, and their two children moved into the house. Now, through the years, my father had acquired such a well relationship with Viola that the small fence appeared entirely capable of simply hopping over, if not walking through the door that would lead right up to the house. Out of fear, Vinney installed a six foot and illegal wooden fence behind the metal one seizing all possibility of crossing properties, and even so, in front of the door he put up six large green pine bushes, which still stand today, as seen in photo. he made the small back porch into a deck for an area where his wife could sunbathe. As the years drew on, tension arise between Vinney and his wife, and eventually the young family got a divorce, Vinney lived alone in the house, working for hours in the basement making it into a bedroom for him to sleep in. For a few months, nothing happened. It was a November morning in 1998 when mailman, who we were friends with, rang our doorbell. He let us know what he had just found in the basement of the next store house, and it wasn’t anything good, it was Vinney, dead. An overdose of heroin was what killed him.

Years drew on. My family demolished the wooden fence that sealed off access to the neighboring property. A team of contractors hired by the bank came by and changed the siding from the original teal color to the beige color it is today, and then the house was boarded up with wood over the windows and doors. I remember afternoon’s I spent with a baseball bat and a baseball tossing up the ball and just hitting it at the house, sometimes Id hit the house, sometimes it would go over the house, once it actually knocked the garage light out of place, like it is now. An older kid from the house on the other side would come by with his friends and hang out in the backyard, in fact a kid I’m actually friends with now.

In 2002, the boards were taken off, the roof was redone, and the deck was given a paint job. This meant one thing, new neighbors. A young Columbian man named Henry and his family moved into the house. He cleaned it up with the time he spent not working, which was really just the late hours of the night. In 2003, his wife divorced him and took the children back to Columbia, even though they still visit every now and then. Henry still works on the house day and night, and in fact, I saw him today putting up a new satellite dish on his roof. I guess that means his children will be visiting for some time. He’s a nice man, and I surely hope that the curse stops with him.

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