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21h28-23h13, 12-March-2013

Previously…on ‘Dallas’.

Between the time I left for Yeshiva University in October ’83 and July ’86 my folks moved once again, this time into a split-level house…a house that came complete with a designated For-When-Kory-is-Home room that was situated squarely at the top of a flight of stairs leading up from the den (which is really just an extremely wordy way of saying “above ground-level” or “2nd floor”). And though most nights my head was not hitting a pillow in this house, during the breaks and holidays that did require I lay me down to sleep at 10431 Shadow Bend Drive in Dallas, TX USA you can reasonably drop coin I was performing my security haunting…that is, until 21-July-1986.

The summer of 1986 began for me in New York, couch-surfing first with a friend in Washington Heights and later with another friend in Brooklyn, while working to hold down a sales job with a lower Manhattan Your-Office-Out-of-the-Office company located somewhere in the shadow of the World Trade Center. That didn’t last long — how could it? — and by mid-July I was back in Dallas, camped out on the 2nd floor of my parents’ house and splitting my time between two part-time jobs, one slinging frozen yogurt in a strip mall and the other ringing up puppies and tropical fish for an awful Valley View Mall pet store.

On that Monday afternoon a wicked height-of-summer storm rocked Dallas, with dark clouds rolling over the city with scary-movie lightning and too-loud thunder cracks along for the ride. I was putting in some hours at the pet store that day, probably spending 90-95% of my time looking out at the pelting rain and doing anything other than useful work (HATED that job, though I did make a friend-for-life out of it in the form of a marvelous cat I lifted from the shop and promptly named “Larceny”). Anyway, a raging thunderstorm at 5PM had become a bright and sunny summer’s evening by 6PM when my shift ended and I took to my car for the 10-minute drive home. At last, the day was mine, and I jacked the stereo volume and had just began mulling over potential nighttime plans when I found myself caught in epic traffic on Hillcrest Road heading south. “Fuck this.”, I said (or, at least, thought), as I took a left, knowing the area so well as to be able to easily skirt the traffic and make it home via neighborhood streets. And soon enough, I was moving smoothly down Boedeker Street and making a right onto Pagewood Drive, singing along to something LOUD and tapping the steering wheel (Talking Heads? Maybe Van Halen?). A minute later, still rockin’, I made a right onto Shadow Bend Drive, and there in front of me was the cause of that horrendous traffic jam I had so ably avoided: my parents’ house ablaze, firefighters in front of around and atop, with every available neighbor looking on. I parked Erin (my first car…faithful readers of this space for the past two weeks already know that) and got out. I then sat on the hood — having taken quick stock of my Mom and Dad and the family dog, Miko, in the crowd — and took in the spectacle, laughing, aglow with the joy of neurosis in resolve.