I was with George Rhine the day he bought the Ridgefield place. He and Chuck in the front seat, and I in the back, had been scouting the back roads in the old "Buick". The one with the flocked dashboard. Did I tell you about the flocked dashboard before? No?      

     Well, not long after they had bought this "Buick" (actually an Olds), Chuck took me out for a spin to see the new car. I was sitting in front on the passenger's side and was struck at once by the unusual flocked dashboard - covered uniformly with a soft, velvety brown flocking - not unlike little fish scales all interlocked together in a most interesting pattern. I remarked on this unusual "extra" and inquired further as to it.

     Chuck turned to me with expressionless eyes. "What in hell you talkin' 'bout, Bernie? That's jus' Pop's seegar flecks..." Then I saw! These were thousands and thousands of cigar shreddings that George had lately launched forth from between his lips while riding shotgun in his Buick - not flocking at all... Mirabileau! And so much by the way, for that "new car smell" ...

     They had, in fact, picked the car up only a week or so before. I remember it well, because the night they drove it off the showroom floor, George loaded the backseat down with a mass of greasy plumber's tools he had picked up somewhere. And the next day they had gone to Rubino's Junkyard, crunching bottles, tacks and whatall 'neath the new tires with no concern whatsoever.

     Nothing - goods, chattel, geese, people, their own skins, lives and fortunes - was sacred to the Rhines.

     But this hot summer afternoon, up on the old North Salem Road, just past the Titicus Brook, George's antennae were up and twitching. He had us stop, and turn around. We cruised slowly back - and there on the opposite side of the road and just north a bit from where old General Wooster fell in the Battle of Ridgefield, was an abandoned and very decrepit Colonial farmhouse. We parked and got out.

     When I tell you what we saw you will wonder why we even bothered to stop. To begin with, the entire first floor in the house was gone - completely gone. Rotted out and dropped into the cellar years ago. In its place was stretched poultry netting and from the quantity of chicken droppings still visible in the cellar, it was obvious what use had been made of these quarters not too long past. The roof ridge sagged and trailed off to one side. Weeds and untrimmed grass sprouted everywhere.

     George walked around, chewing, and silently assessing the situation. Then he strode back to the car and heaved aboard.

     "You guys take me down to the realtor" was all he said.

      We noted the name on the sign and went downtown to find the office. To make a long story short, George bought that house that very afternoon - bought it outright, with I think 2.5 acres of land and a small pond in back - for $2500.00! This would have been about 1954 maybe - or thereabouts.

     Fact! I was there! This was to be our new playing fields of Eton. Upon this structure new lessons would be learned, new adventures had, new friendships forged - Yes! But for now, the crickets sang in the heat and the old timbers settled imperceptibly into the dust...

     We started the next week.

     First, we jacked up the entire remains of the house on wood cribs in the cellar (actually, first, we shoveled out the cellar...!). When the entire structure was thus supported, we next tore down completely the dry-wall stone foundation. This was then relaid - in mortar. Next we laid up a great beehive oven George designed (this all took months and months...). This was the "ox roasting oven" as it came to be called. Into this oven was let an overhead rail and hooks which rode the rail on little wheels. George forged all this ironwork himself, Colonial style. The old fireplace in the cellar was relaid and pointed up. We broke up the marble slabs from West Point (remember?) and laid a smooth marble floor in the cellar.

     This was in the atom-bomb-scare days when all expected to be blown away by the Russkies on any given night - so we next dug a bombshelter out to one side of the cellar. This went out through the cellar wall and through a bank of dirt on that side of the house - to open out on its end in a little balcony of sorts where the bank fell away. (A bomb shelter with balcony might seem an oxymoron or something - but that's what the boss wanted...).

     When this elaborate stonework was at last well in hand (George was a Master Stonemason - one of the best I've ever seen), then we lowered the ruin above back down upon the new foundation and removed the cribs.. He could look at a stone, crack it with his hammer and have just what he wanted. We were always bringing in stones: he ate them for breakfast. Matter of fact, this would be a good place maybe, to tell about the great Stone Raids on North Street, which occurred about this time...

     But before I tell this, you must know about the fleet of vehicles George owned and how we operated them all. You have heard previously of the Nash. And of the command car - George's Buick (really an Olds). But there were many others - nine in all! Many were not registered, which never stopped the Rhines from driving them - openly - upon the highways and byways of Greenwich. License plates were for the faint-of-heart, not them. Many of these cars (one was an old tow truck) lacked brakes. The whole motor pool was not to be believed. Something or other was always being ticketed or towed in or impounded or something. George paid these fines resolutely and silently - without protest. I never really understood it at all - but Chuck once cryptically told me

     "Pop, you see, Bernie .....he always likes to live near the border of two states (here CT/NY) 'cause that way he can kind of keep his cars on both sides and the registration and all - you know everybody's guessing on both sides of the line and all..." He trailed off. Only explanation I ever got.