Theme week Six

When I was growing up in Bucksport Maine my family lived next door to what we called the Woodman Estate. Oh what a sight the Woodman Estate was. It was a place that really made an awful statement and I would never have gone there if not for my best friend Betty. There were three main sections to the woodman Estate, the huge garage, the very unique house, and the jungle backyard.
The woodman Estate had a very large tar papered shack that doubled as a garage. It sat about ten feet from route forty six. Within that ten feet was a mildewed, moldy, rotting canvas fence that was held up by logs that had been cut down when the Woodman’s were clearing the land for the backyard. All around the perimeter of the large structure were rusty, old junk cars. Approximately twenty five cars were around the garage, most of which were Chevrolet. There were hundreds of tires strategically placed around the cars. One of the tire towers looked like it could have been infinite in height. There were piles of what I can only assume were old broken car parts. At one time I could have sworn that I saw a human arm sticking out of one of the piles. I never really did find out what it was and I was too scared to ask anyone about it. Inside the garage I would always find Mr. Woodman and his friends. I’m not sure if he ever actually left the garage. Mr. Woodman was a scary sight to say the least. Grease from head to toe, only about two teeth (I never got close enough to count), and hair that had not been brushed in at least thirty years. He always had a couple of friends in the garage tinkering on things with him. I would watch people go into the garage looking half way decent and come out looking like Mr. Woodman’s twin.
The house wasn’t much different from the garage, except that the other three members of the family (Mrs. Woodman, Travis Woodman, and Betty Lou Woodman) lived inside. The house looked exactly like the garage on the outside. My father always told me that the Woodman’s were keeping with a theme. As I would make my way up the through the path of junk on the front deck to the door, I felt like I was being watched. Then when I turned around I would see the twelve hunting Beagles in the large, hand built kennel on the left side of the deck. The smell of dog shit would make me gag, and the sight of the dirty, nasty dogs made me sad. The dogs were covered in their own feces that had dried to their fur and caused it to look like they had chunks of hair missing. The dogs were well fed and when it was extremely cold out, the Woodman’s would place the dogs in the heated barn that use to be used for their three horses. I would knock on the door and almost immediately a raspy deep voice would yell “Come in God damn it.” The scary part was that the raspy, deep voice came from Mrs. Woodman. The only thing Mrs. Woodman would do is sit at the table smoking one cigarette after another, and stare out the window. The kitchen table held all the old mail from the past year or so and anything Mrs. Woodman had forgotten to throw in the trash can that was only three feet to the left of the table. I never even saw her get up to go to the bathroom. I never stayed inside long enough to find out. She would always tell me that I didn’t have to knock and to just come in, but I was to scared at what I might find if I didn’t knock. As I walked into the kitchen I would see dirty dishes piled up in the sink that had a garden hose for a faucet. The stove that they used for cooking was actually their woodstove they used as a heater. To my immediate left was the kitchen table where Mrs. Woodman sat with a lit cigarette in one hand and the rest of the carton on the table in front of her. I would walk through the kitchen to the living room where I would usually find Travis Woodman. Travis was a very nice boy that was about a year older than me. I’m embarrassed to admit it now (knowing how he turned out), but I had a bit of a crush on him as a child. As I walked through the living room I would see piles of dirty laundry in the right corner of the room. There was an old brown rug that got vacuumed about once a month. In the center of the rug was a grease stain from when Travis was trying to rebuild an engine in the living room. Next I would go through the second door on the right, into Betty Lou Woodman’s bedroom. I always made sure not to take the first door on the right. The first door led to what they called the bathroom. The bathroom contained the litter box for their twenty plus cats. I don’t think it had ever been changed since it was overflowing with cat shit and stunk so bad that they had to keep the door closed and add a pet door to try to contain some of the odor. Betty is the only reason I ever attempted to enter the house. Betty’s room was not at all like the rest of her house. Her clothes were always clean and folded neatly in her drawers. Her posters on her bedroom wall were always straight, and any picture frames she had were dusted daily. She made her bed as soon as she got up every morning and placed her stuffed animals in the same place on her bed everyday. I use to tell her that someday she would have the biggest beautiful house in the town. Boy was I wrong, she is actually now living in that same house that she was raised in. She did however clean up the yard, plant some grass for a lawn, and put siding on the house. From the back sliding glass door of the house, Betty and I would walk out into the back yard. We called the back yard a jungle. The jungle consisted of more junk cars, trees that had been cut down and left where they had fallen and a home made ropes course that looked like a monkey habitat at the zoo. It was the best place to play hide and seek. The back porch went from one side of the house all the way to the other side of the house. This porch was huge in size, but held so much junk you couldn’t tell how big it really was. I would walk down the four rotted, wooden steps into the jungle. The first thing I would walk past was an old Chevy Camerro that had been there since before I was born. The Camerro was originally red and had a tee top. At some point the tee top had been cut off from the roof of the car with a chainsaw. The Camerro became our art work. We spray painted care bears all over the hood and a rainbow on the left side. Just beyond the Camerro was an old Chevy pick up that doubled as an oversized trash can. Inside the pick up were beer bottles, cans and bags of trash that never made it to the dumpster. About two feet past the pick up were three huge trees lying on the ground. The trees had been cut down but never cut up for fire wood which was the reason for cutting them down. To the left of the trees was the home made ropes course that Betty, Travis, and Mr. Woodman built three years prior. The ropes course started out with a cargo net and went into a high rope that led to a tree platform about twenty feet away. From the tree platform the triangular rope pattern led to another junk car. The ropes course didn’t get used much after the first few months it was there. Travis had fallen off the triangular section of the course and broke his arm, preventing us from being allowed to use it anymore.