AND SO WE SETTLED IN. Mostly we lived in Millie's house on Blaine St., Norwalk. Nice place. The Norwegian lived next door. Few issues – not many. In the years since, this neighborhood has gone downhill: went back once - all blacks there. Took picture of place for mementos: Black glowered at me. I glowered back. "Whuffo you be take photograff mah place?" Etc.

First, we sold my place. My kids all gone anyhow: college. My barn I had built over the years, my cabin, our little pond and dam and the beach we had laboriously created lugging in all the sand ourselves... all gone now. Was tough call.

But I got a fair price and it sold right off. Liquidated a lot of furniture – but still wound up with a lot. I have always been a "collector" – and Jean was, too. Blending this household in with Millie's (she was "collector", too) had us bulging at the seams.

But we soon sold her place and bought one of our own up in Redding Ridge north of us. This was some grand Chateau, I want to tell you! Old Field Lane. (Shown here in a clip from a brochure many years later, when we sold the house in turn... My barn, to which I often allude, is way down the property at right). Brand new 4000-square-foot rambling sort of "Colonial" place. Five acres – orchard and meadows – surrounded all sides by thick brush and woodlot strip. Man! Were we ever happy there! Her stepmother came to live with us... but with all that room even we two managed to stay pretty well out of each other's way. I had my own PR business now (BWP Associates) and a big office on the first floor. I was just getting into computers – my first: an old Wang (if anyone here remembers them!). We had a wetbar, a "Greeting Room" wsith stone fireplace, a huge "Collections Room" with fireplace, a formal living room with fireplace - three fireplaces! – and I cut all my own firewood on our densely wooded lot! Storage galore. Two-and-a-half car garage. Circular driveway in from the lane – what's not to like? (Pic).

One of my accounts at the time was in the swim pool business (Bio-Lab out of Decatur, GA). I had to go down there about every month – and go to "pool school" which they ran for their dealers - and so I became prettty pool-savvy. So nothing would do but we put in a Pool. Mill and I were great swimmers anyhow – we used to get up at dawn and go down Route 7 and swim at the "Y" there – even in the coldest, darkest New England winter days! So we put in a 50 x 15 sort of lap pool so we could swim laps. (Fifty one feet in fact – so that in the unlikely event "anyone" ever broke a record here – and Guiness got stuffy abut it – the pool length would at least be beyond doubt!) It was a gorgeous, troublefree pool, and one of the joys of my life. As you can see, I (later) put in an antique brick deck to the right side and built a "gazebo" (far right), which latter I covered with grape vines I planted and of a summer afternoon I could sit out in my own gazebo, pluck grapes off the vines dangling in my face, sip wine, and cool off by a dip in my Olympic-size pool! (It doesn't get much better than this, Pilgrim... but Life has many tricks up its sleeve -as you shall see...).

Days of Wine-and-Roses for sure... La Dolce Vita! (So you got to take the rest in stride, too....!).

For a final fillip - I bought a Classic-type Dolphin cast fountain, plumbed it in, and that is the object right on the edge of the pool but not too clear in the picture. Hot afternoons, Bernie standing like a middle-aged satyr under the fountain in the pool, the stream playing upon his head, bunch of grapes held to his mouth, wine glass in hand, pristine waters to his neck...

Many people cite a constant litany of "pool maintenance" ills – but I never had any! The key to a satisfactory pool is to stay on top of the minimal maintenance at all times and never let it get ahead of you. If you don't – you're screwed. Ditto for horses. We were now keeping my daughter Candy's horse – old Missy. She never gave me any troubles nor developed any vices I could not live with. But with horses, as with pools, you got to stay connected - and one jump out ahead of them – or they will do you in, too! Far as I was concerned, Missy was not as much trouble as keeping our dog or cat...!

Next I built another barn – or better: hired a couple of barn-building brothers to build it for and with me. This is the Barn you see in the upper right corner of the picture. (Note the 'Redman Chew' ad I hand-painted on the side: no American barn authentic without one! Grin!)It was a beauty. Old Style New England look – all clear pine which I wanted to let weather to silver tone antique – but which (unfortunately – but by then it was his barn!) the guy who bought house from me went and painted traditional barn red. Good color, of course – but I thought the natural weathering preferable at the time. I had become a big student of the New England artist, Eric Sloane (link) and incorporated many details from his celebrated Age of Barns.... My barn housed a big woodwork shop, an equipment-storage bay, a separate enclosed stall for Missy – and later – a blacksmith shop – better: "smithy" – which I enclosed along the back side.

But first, I built a log Cabin – a real one: the old way! – way out back in the "woods" at the very back of our property. This was to house my first blacksmith shop – a craft-skill I was even then teaching myself. With connivance of a friend who lived at the edge of the extensive woodlands owned by the Bridgeport Hydraulic Company around their big holdings on the Saugatuck Reservoir just north of us, we selectively cut and hauled out over many weeks – any number of mixed prime oak, poplar, beech and maple trunks – and I laboriously transported these back to our place on my trailer and jeep.

Then I set to work with axe and saw. Working alone and often in the snow, I finally got up a pretty good structure. I used Old Missy to pull many of the logs into position – it was like Gary Cooper when he played young "Sgt. York" eons ago in the movies! LOL! I shingled it about 50-50 with handsplits ("shakes") and machine cuts. I laid the handsplits edge protruding "to the weather" along the ridge just like the oldtimers once did – you can see this in this pictures of my cabin if you look (pix). I was motivated to the laborious job of splitting shakes just to see if I could do it – relying on my grandfather's onetime description to me of how he had done same in youth. For this I forged one of my first "antique" tool reproductions: a fro. And thus taught myself how to make a passable shake, by twisting "to and fro" (where the term comes from!) with my forged fro and a wooden billy.

And so the days slipped into weeks, then months and years... and we settled down to some great suburban living. My business only took abut half to three-quarters of my time now anyhow. I only went into the City rarely – most of it was out in Connecticut these days. Millie was still full-bore in her business – in fact she had sold her father's firm – and gone along in the deal with a nice fat job for herself thrown in – so she was in the prime of her years. Her mother ran the big house – I tinkered around in my shops and my firstfloor office in front – and alternately jogged and rode Missy late in the day....

And thereby reminds of one of the strangest things that ever happened...

I was working at my desk in my office one hot, summer afternoon. No one was home – Millie was at work and my Mother-in-Law, who still drove, was off shopping somewhere... I was aware it was getting darker outside – a thunderstorm was in the making... Soon it broke in a hail of rain and wind and not shortly thereafter there was a "Crash! " like ten howitzers going off at once! What a BAM!

"Damn!" says I, "That was close! Must've struck nearby..." I then became aware of a strange grating sound somewhere nearby – but could not quite locate the source. It tapered off and quit. Next thing I knew it grew uncomfortably hot in the house: heat was coming out of the central air conditioning ducts.

"What the hell", says I. And went over and turned the thermostat way down. Damn equipment: always acting up, etc. But it continued to pump out...heat! so after a bit, my thought processes being so busted up now – and the sun again having come out and all – I thought, "Well, I think I will go out and jog – can't get anymore done here today anyhow."

So I put on my jogging togs and trotted out to the end of our driveway and as I reached the lane, I sort of turned around just to get a glance back at our place.

But something was wrong... One of our huge stone chimneys was gone! That is, it was half gone – sort of a stump chimney sticking up at the end of the house (far end from where my office was). And what was this? All over my roof lay ...scattered bricks! The light suddenly dawned: we had been hit by lightning – and it had destroyed our chimney! (I still didn't connect the erratic air conditioning to it all...).

I stood hesitant for a moment and then thought "Oh, be damned to it all! Nothing else seems to be amiss – and I'm set to jog...," so I turned and headed on down the lane for my constitutional, figuring time enough when I got back to delve into these affairs.

Shortly thereafter, Millie entered Stage Left – driving down the driveway on her return from work. She however, does not notice the missing chimney, nor the bricks all over the roof...

What she sees first is a sort of metallic, vaguely barbecue-grill-like metal object lying on its side in the sideyard. And all around it on the lawn were scattered bricks... Now we had in fact just recently been talking about me putting in a masonry barbecue grill out back by the pool. But had not quite decided... But when she saw this metallic grill object in the lawn, and the bricks everywhere - she jumped to the conclusion, that "Oh! my darling, thinking to surprise me, has gone and bought a grill and bricks and started to work quietly on the side installing our backyard barbecue! But why, " she wondered, "has he so carelessly tossed it aside in the yard and it is not like him to throw bricks around like that – he is very neat and orderly and always stacks them up... Curious..."

Curious indeed – for the "grill" which she beheld was actually a heavy-duty chimney cap to pass the smoke but keep out the raccoons which I had had to put on top of the chimney when we moved in! The lightening had blown this heavy metal fabrication a good two hundred feet through the air, to land half buried in our lawn on the opposite side of the house! And inspection days later showed that many of the airborne bricks had travelled the same route, too – landing with such force in some cases and on their ends as to bury themselves halfway in my lawn! Fortunately no one (and no parked car or other!) happened to be in the way at the time!

And so Millie continued on indoors to be about her business – but was met at the door by a wave of about 95-degree heat and the heat pump system could not be made to shut down! So she went around opening all the windows...

Eventually I returned, puffing and chuffing up the driveway and "Why are all the windows open here – curtains blowing out in the dust, etc.?," I wondered.

When I felt the heat , the last link fell into place: the lightning had "fried" our attic unit's computer "brain"; the next day the technician had to come out and replace it. So we compared stories at last and managed to get it all figured out. Even the scraping noise I had heard right after the BAM! – those were the bricks sliding down the grit-covered shingles of my roof...! It all went together...

Aftermath: the insurance company paid for everything. We never did build an outside barbecue! LOL! I tried to get a mason to come and repair my chimney, but it was the summer months and everyone was "too busy." Summer turned to Fall, Fall turned to Winter and Winter brought up a raw, bleak, New Year's Day – complete with snow squalls and dark mist upon the land. Early that morning (of all mornings in the Year!) there was a knock at the door. I went down to see. It was Tony – and his two grown sons – a mason I had "left word" with months before – standing in the cold and wet with a big smile on his face as he announced:"Come-a to fix-a da chim!"

"Fix the chimney?", I blurted out. "Tony – you can't even see the ridgepole when you look up the side of the house!"

"No problem-a," says Tony and he and his sons set to work. In no time they had erected a sort of moveable scaffolding alongside the chimney stump – and all three then climbed up it and disappeared into the mists above – kind of like Jack-in-the-Beanstalk or something.

The day wore on. Occasional bits of mortar rained down from above, distant halloos and shouts were heard – now and then even scraps of Italian arias torn away by the winds... but the Wizards themselves remained shrouded in mist.

Later, they descended, resumed form and substance again, announced that they were all finished and departed – taking their take-down scaffolding with them. The following day dawned clear and bright – and the early sun shown down on the most beautiful reconstructed "chim" around that part of the country! I trust the present owner enjoys his occasional "fires in the fireplace" – if nonetheless ignorant of the portentious affairs that once took place here, to make it all possible....