I recall another early task at Haverstraw: I was detailed to help Chuck finish up a ditch that was being dug (for some unknown reason) out into the middle of the street. This had been started some time before, and regulation-type barricades (purloined off legitimate construction sites) were in place and traffic was obligingly driving around our "construction site".

    Chuck offered no explanation. We dug and dug. Around noon we "found" what we were looking for: the gas main under the street. Chuck disappeared to find "Pop" - and soon they both materialized topside and jumped down into the ditch. My counsel was not sought - so I merely watched. The old man had a peculiar-looking device in one hand: kind of like a steel "carrot" it was, with a cross-tee handle on it. The carrot was serrated like, with circular rings around it. More I could not see.

   In a flash (I came later to know time was of the essence), the old man's arm rose and Wham! he came right down on the cast iron main - and whump! the carrot poked a tiny round hole clear through the cast pipe and stuck in tight. I still saw nothing amiss. What did I - a mere shovel hand - know of these esoteric matters? It was obvious father and son had done this many times - and they worked as a silent, efficient team. Next, a length of pipe was expeditously screwed into an integral valve housing of some kind in the end of the "carrot" - and father and son retired further back up the ditch (speedily, I noted) to extend additional sections of pipe toward the house...

   I was ordered to "Wake up, Bernie. Take your idiot stick and get going. Start filling the ditch in again, pronto!"

   By mid-afternoon, the ditch was filled, the barricades removed and traffic flow on Samsondale Avenue (I remember the name!) was normal again. Only later - much later - and in casual conversation with Chuck did it dawn on me what these two (or us three?) had done: we had tapped into the public gas main on our own!

   When I tell you that while lesser men learn to pick locks and hotwire Chevys, but that George Rhine could tap public mains, and that he rode on that illicit connection for many, many months - and when finally caught - was able to "negotiate" even then for a most favorable settlement and terms - you may express your doubts - and to these you are assuredly entitled.

    But I swear to you - it's all true! And if I add that I have also known George at later dates to have built (from parts bought and scrounged everywhere) his own telephone units and to have likewise tapped into Ma Bell's convenient flow for many a complicated free ride - you may express yet further doubt..... but he did!

   To my knowledge, in all of his tales, and in all of the escapades I was to share with him,. George was never jailed. But had he been - it would have been a colossal waste of time. I know in my bones that no cell was ever built, no prison yard so high - that it would have kept George Rhine from freedom...

    About this time, George bought a whole truckload of used house doors somewhere. And Chuck and I drove the truck over to Haverstraw and unloaded the doors in the yard. That week, some of the neighbors complained about the doors. (It was actually a very rundown neighborhood - but those who have the least complain the loudest, right?). In fact, it was the low price of the Brickmaster's House in such a neighborhood that made the place a good buy in the first place. And George's efforts alone, reversed that entire neighborhood's fortunes, as it were. And he had done this many, many times in communities around the country. But of this, of course, his current neighbors knew not.

    So - partly to express his disdain for their concern - and partly because we needed some dry storage area in which to store tools and materials and all, Chuck and I were detailed to build a "warehouse" of the doors. (There were hundreds of them). And so we did: a long, warehouse-style shelter arose in the back of the property - sheathed entirely in brightly painted interior doors of every kind and quality... It was beautiful and rather unearthly when we finished. It added a surreal quality to the landscape and reminded me of pictures I had seen somewhere of a similar structure built by druggies in the New Mexico desert... The neighbors shut up.

    George had taken now to staying part of the week in Haverstraw and commuting to work in Greenwich. When he returned home in the evening, the last stretch in his journey was a short walk up the New York Central tracks from the local railroad station, then he crossed over a small switching yard and entered his property from the back... Along the way, he routinely passed several low switch-signal lights - the old-fashioned lantern kind, much sought now by collectors. When no one was looking, he often "liberated" these lights from their stanchions - and hung them from the rafters of our warehouse. Soon he had dozens of these lanterns along the ceiling. Here they joined the more than 75 four-poster beds (actual count!) that once shared quarters with them - and the festoons of ice skates and all kinds of other stuff which he continually bought at auction ... Soon the warehouse was bursting at the seams.

    This was easily and speedily remedied: Chuck and I - kind of like ants building some kind of giant nest - would just extend the warehouse at one end (that nearest the neighbors) by adding on more.... doors! It was the warehouse-from-hell.