Nights we slept just about anywhere. George's houses during these extended remodelings and rebuildings looked rather more like pirate's dens than anything else I can think of. Stuff poured in from the constant buying at auctions, with the result that there were two of everything (sometimes three, or four - or more!). Two dining room tables, dozens of settees, lamps everywhere, books in boxes, books on shelves, in fact - books everywhere. (Everyone read all the time). The sideboard in the dining room had about ten or twelve complete silver sets - urns, pots, trays and so on jammed upon it. Expensive bric-a-brac from ages past was used indiscriminantly: cut-crystal glasses served as common drinking glasses in the kitchen, the "hands" wiped their collective hands (and faces) on linen napkins, hand-embroidered doilies and what all not snatched from "Carton-and-Contents" auction buys. I thought often on the dead spinsters' hands that had lovingly and patiently sewn these fabrics back in the Victorian Age. And now they were wiping the faces of the barbarians... Sic transit gloria mundi.

   Ruthie was a walking exemplar of this profligate style: her standard dress summer or winter - was a magnificent old mink coat sans buttons! This was hitched-to in front with a large blanket pin - askew. In warmer weather the pin might be dispensed with. So attired, "Mom" or Ruthie, performed her duties as Overseer in the kitchen (she was a really good cook!) and as Keeper of the Books...

   The "Books" were like the Irish Book of Kells I guess - or something. In them was writ large the Life and Times and Particulars of all the "hands". They contained everything on everyone - more like the FBI files, now that I think on it. Most importantly, they recorded in their columns who was owed how much and all. It worked kind of like the old "company store" routine of days gone by: you could "borrow" against your column if hard pressed. But then you understandably took in less on settlement day. Most complex of all (of course!) were the columns recording arrangements with swappers and swap-ees... Of these shoals - forewarned! - I had steered clear.

   Aside from her cooking and bookkeeping duties, Ruthie was resident artist. As noted previously, she was actually very talented - in any medium. George was a stickler for historically perfect reconstructions in all these undertakings and he and Ruthie planned each detail down to the last item, room by room.. It chanced that the Master Bedroom of the Brickmaster's Manse called for a special hand-blocked wallpaper - wisteria vines, I recall - available only in "blocks" or big sheets from some place in France (George had traded with the firm for years). Somehow, though, these handmade papers were not available when it came time to do the Master Bedroom at Haverstraw.

    So George set Ruthie to work - painting the entire bedroom walls in oils by hand - duplicating the same wisteria vine over and over. I see her now stolidly sitting on the floor in her old mink coat, contentedly painting away - the smell of turps strong in the air...

    And so as the years rolled on, Haverstraw emerged from under its long neglect and became a showpiece, indeed. There were articles in the papers, and national magazines came and interviewed George. He told the breathless young reporters how one day we had been prying up floorboards in the attic, when we stumbled on a hoard of old letters and papers. He figured out that the Master of the House, or one of his clerks, had had a desk here - and had simply slipped discarded items between the floorboard cracks. They were pages out of history! They told of Revolutionary events in the neighborhood - and once described in some detail the view from this same attic window then of the "hundreds and hundreds of acres" that stretched away in the property in all directions...! George later gave this collection to the Library of Congress.

    He took it all in stride for this was something like the 27th such house (counting forward from his historic beginnings in Paragould, recall) - that he had so undertaken. Along the way there had been a "Canalmaster's House" down on some old barge canal it seemed to me in Maryland or Virginia. Here his penchant for authenticity had extended to duplicating the oyster shell plaster of the original walls, and Chuck verified how "Pop", eschewing child labor laws and other such enjoinings, had kept Chuck, Don, several childhood chums, and several negro workers hard at work day and night in the front yard (by moonlight only, no "spots" this time), where they pounded oyster shells in giant wooden mortars finally producing (before the neighbors complained) several tons of pure oyster grit for this historic mortar. I believe the Late Justice Black of the U.S. Supreme Court bought this house from George and lived in it - but it may have been one of his others...

    There was another place in Virginia he restored. It even had a resident ghost! At night, when all were in bed, the thump, thump, thump upon the cellar stairs of this "ghost" was heard. Local legend connected this with some old ship's captain from the past who had lived there and had come and gone through a mysterious "tunnel" in the cellar on midnite visitations to parts unknown. The "thumps" were said to be his treasure chest being dragged upstairs, one tread at a time... Later investigation revealed that a switching yard and roundhouse lay just over the ridge behind the house, and every night at midnite, the little switch engine began its work.... Chuff!...chuff!...chuff! So - the way of all ghosts, of course - but the tale went with the place when it was sold...

    I mentioned above after "all" had gone to bed - but I should have added, "except George". George never slept. When the hands and the helpers had all fallen exhausted on their respective pallets, George was still going strong. I can see him now - chewing vigorously on his stogie and casually pushing boards through the screaming table saw - setup like as not in the middle of the front room - its attendant pile of sawdust spilling out across the floor - perhaps shin deep at times, completely covering priceless Orientals (auction!) themselves likely laid swiss-cheese fashion one on top of another. The whole scene lit only by the flicker of a long-gone TV set - late come from the auction ("great buy") sans speaker but tube intact... And so George would while away the wee small hours till reveille blew and the "hands" could be rousted out once again... A modern Blackbeard - a William Teach perhaps, pacing the quarterdeck while the lesser mortals in his "crew" knit up the ravelled sleeve of care...

    The mayor lived a few blocks short of Samsondale - and once, this mostly sidewalk-less community suddenly found a brand new concrete sidewalk laid almost overnight it seemed from the heart of town out to the mayor's front door. George immediately suspected featherbedding, crony-ism, pork barrel and the like in the appearance of this phenomenon. And he so conveyed his suspicions direct - to the Mayor himself. Surprise - surprise! Within only days, and though he had not really wanted one - the concrete sidewalk snaked on past the Mayor's house to end up several blocks away at - George's front door!

    This achievement greatly elevated his standing with his neighbors...

    Where there's a will there's a way...