Crazy Stable

It's time for one last lazy weekend before we are called forth on the Quest.

Several quests, actually. Daughter will journey into high school, which we hope will be more Rivendell than Mordor. But this fall, the forces of darkness and redemption will be coming right here to our door, and in fact will be ripping the roof off our house.

Yes, the CrazyStable is finally getting its new roof, although it remains to be seen whether or not the budget--a Frodo-scaled lump of cash with big intentions--will extend far enough to replace our rotting cedar-shingle siding (with new cedar, not vinyl or aluminum)...much less to fix the remaining interior ruins. We're taking bids now, from a colorful cast of characters. So far, all the bids exceed the original downpayment on the entire house, but we expected that.

What's really daunting is the collateral damage that will inevitably result from a crew of guys, even a good crew, tearing off up to five layers of roof shingles right down to the joists. A roofing jobsite looks like Saruman'a Orc factory at full throttle. Plants are trampled outside in a hail of debris and four-inch nails; inside, dust sifts out of every pore and mysterious cracks appear. Worst of all, men will keep coming up to me and saying things like "Ma'am? You wanna come see something here?" which is contractor-ese for "Hit up your ATM with an armored car and a steamer trunk."

After years of listening resignedly to the plonk...plonk...plonk of rainwater in the pans in our laundry room during every downpour, it's unnerving to finally face this massive expenditure to make it right. Part of me wants to just ditch the job and spend the money on travel. (Hey, the house apparently survived for decades with no gutters or leaders; even with continuing water damage, it would probably remain standing at least until we retired.) For the cost of this roof, the three of us could see London, Paris and Rome. Damn you, CrazyStable.

(And no, we can't just patch it; been there and done that.)

We will not do the Grand Tour; we will get a new roof. We will try to hire the best team we can get to go up there and make things right. There will be dumpsters, and nails will rain from the sky. But for just this one more weekend, we will relax and try not to think about it.

Guess what our State Farm home-insurance "hurricane deductible" is. Go ahead! Guess how much hurricane damage we'd have to pay for before State Farm shells over one red cent!

Well, according to the "we-got-burned-by-Katrina"-ish notice in our latest policy, it's a whopping $25,000. That's for at least a Category 1, and State Farm specifies that the storm's duration "includes the time period beginning 12 hours prior to the time hurricane force wind speeds are measured at any National Weather Service measuring site in this state" and "ending 12 hours after the last time the [service] declares that the hurricane has been downgraded to a tropical storm."

The deductible is calculated at 5% of the dwelling replacement cost. Holy crap, is that not a staggering, indeed ludicrous, deductible? I mean, if the roof blows off, State Farm—like a good neighbor—will stand by sympathetically while we shell out the first $25 grand...or, just about the ballpark cost of a new roof. Thanks, neighbor! (And it's not like we're a beachfront house in Cape Hatteras, either; we're way inland in Flatbush. Something tells me these trivial distinctions don't count.)

I had read that the insurance companies planned to jack up hurricane deductibles, since tiresome policyholders kept pestering them to pay claims on actual damage from hurricanes. Fortunately, the deductibles for alien invasions, meteor strikes, and spontaneous human combustion have remained low. Meanwhile, check the fine print on your homeowner's policy. And then pray for all those tropical depressions to stay way offshore.

Images: Buster Keaton in Steamboat Bill, Jr.

Is it possible to own a 3,000-square-foot "Victorian" house and not fantasize about turning it into a charming bed and breakfast? Not for me, anyway. Our former boarding house, with its front porch, half-dozen bedrooms, and big roomy kitchen, all steps from the "countryside" of Prospect Park, has long tempted me with reveries of serving up scones and bacon to appreciative tourists. And when we vacation someplace like Cobble View in the Berkshires, the dream suddenly seems both more desirable--and more absurd.

Far from home, all the B&B's quirks and delights seem inspiring and accessible. Back home, I am going to put dried-flower twig wreaths on all the doors! We need a gazebo! We need Adirondack chairs and a hammock!

After a few days of rustic recreation, outright delusions set in. The family patiently endures as I declare: I am going to get a flock of chickens, Rhode Island Reds and Buff Orpingtons, and raise them in the garage! 

Heck, while we're at it, let's get a bunny! (This is Thumper of Tyringham, who has ethereal, marshmallow-fluff whiskerpads.)

B&Bs always smell good, like lemon furniture polish and cinnamon rolls. They have pristine quilts and wide-plank pine floors, and comfy chairs and fireplaces and guestbooks filled with raves from happy families and grateful hikers. In my demented-Martha-Stewart dreams, our house is transformed into an urban/urbane version of this hospitality heaven. In these fantasies, there is no alarm-system keypad to contend with, no kitty-litter pans or hairballs, no holes in the walls, leaking roof, or flaking paint. Flatbush, too, is transformed back into Dutch farmland; no passing pranksters to boil a bunny or kidnap and sacrifice a chicken, no itinerant bathroom-seekers to invade and despoil a gazebo, and no alternate-side-parking regs to explain to baffled guests. "Key? Well, if you like," we'd say. "But we never use one!"

And then we arrive home, guests in our own B&B again. The fantasy is over, but another reality sets in: This is home, and it's ours, and we don't have to please anyone here but ourselves. However, my hat's off to some folks actually doing B&B in Victorian Flatbush; their accommodations look delightful, like Bibi's Garden on Westminster Road, shown above. (Check them all out here; what a nifty alternative to an impersonal hotel or motel for visiting family or friends!)

I still dream of the house transformed into B&B bliss: cozy, mellow, with homespun treasures strewn about and comforts and conveniences at hand. Until then, our guests will have to settle for a hearty welcome, plenty of bacon, and our heartwarming historic anecdotes of serving as the set for a bomb laboratory on Law & Order.

This is Tyringham, Massachusetts, where we just passed an idyllic week, in a bed & breakfast whose hosts don't even lock their doors at night.

This is the human blood shed early this morning at the intersection nearest our home in Brooklyn, where a man was stabbed and, according to police, nearly killed outside the Parade Grounds section of Prospect Park. We didn't even hear a commotion, or at least not much of one by our city standards, just a shout and the sound of breaking glass. This lovely summer morning, parents and children stepped unknowingly through the dried puddle on their way to the soccer fields.

Now, it's never easy to come back to the city from a blissful sabbatical in the countryside--you can't help but question your sanity during those first uneasy bumps back down to urban earth--but this kind of stark contrast should be the work of bad novelists, not reality.  And my own Inner Bad Novelist is the one gripped by the drama; after all, in 20 years here, very few have involved crime-scene tape. For all its crowds and litter, the park's periphery is usually a blessing of fresh air, and the park itself a respite just as beautiful as it was in Frederick Law Olmsted's day.

But Saturday afternoon's return had already socked us with a series of mundane reality checks, from the choking traffic across the Brooklyn Bridge, to the nutty Nation of Islam guys distributing their angry screeds and bean pies at its base, to the guy peeing in a neighbor's shrubbery as we turned down our own street. To transition from the Berkshires back to Brooklyn is hard enough; returning to bloodshed visible from our porch is disturbing and demoralizing.

Shouldn't someone wash the blood away? With no rain predicted until tomorrow, it will sit there in all its Shakespearean significance for at least another 24 hours.

Yes, it is odd, you reading 'Teacher Man' on the very day I'm called out of this life. And here we are having a quick chat.

Not just reading the book—trying to get up the nerve to write my own. Actually, it's not the first time I've had uncanny encounters right around the time of someone's death. It seems to be a sort of window or aperture between worlds.

Well, let's hope folks can't just conjure me for inspiration, or I'll never move on. After 'Angela's Ashes,' I became a sort of patron saint to literary late bloomers, all hungering for a bit of encouragement to write their sad life stories.

What would you tell them?

Why, to do it, of course! What have you got to lose? Why wait as long as I did, when you're a mere child of 52 with your whole life ahead of you?

I just...who the hell wants to hear my story at book length?

What is it, then, your 'story'?

[Sigh]

Go on.

[Reluctant pause] Needy, infuriating Irish mother and the struggle to survive her dance with death?

Nah, you're right, 'twould never sell.

Very funny. But Mr. McCourt, you had this...this epic of childhood suffering to draw on.

And you have this epic house, and all the lot of it that went on here. It doesn't matter if it's Limerick or Flatbush, it's the tales you tell, waiting to get out and breathe on their own, and maybe the little bit of wisdom you won.

That's another thing—the exposure...you took some heat for how much you revealed, how did you have the guts?

Oh, what rubbish. Do you have a friend that couldn't recite the stories along with you by now? I thought not. We spend years telling the tales, to our drinking buddies, to our students, to taxicab drivers, and then go all shy at the sight of a keyboard. Think of it as bestowing the gift of immortality. Speaking of which, I'll be off now. Raise a pint to me now and then.

Mr. McCourt? Thanks.

[All is quiet]

And may you be in Heaven half an hour before the devil knows you're dead.

Image: Eric Feferberg/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images