Travels to Erie (and back again)

After giving up on the M*A*S*H retrospective a little before eleven, both Dad and I went to bed. I slept on a couch that used to live in prominence at our house in Williamsville but has now been relegated to a mere half-life in Dad's Erie apartment. We joke about the apartment, that it is where our random things go to die. Erie is just a step above the trash heap. Things will be saved for my future, hypothetical apartment before they will be sent to Erie. I slept on one of these such relics that has gone into retirement in Erie. Dad slept in his comfy bed up the iron spiral staircase in the loft.

I awoke in the morning remarkably well rested but, strangely, itchier than I had been before reposing on the couch. Come to discover that the couch - like Posie and like the Swamp on M*A*S*H - was flea infested and that the fleas had happily gobbled on my delicious skin throughout the night! This comes after battling fleas on Posie for most of the break. Apparently, she has infested Dad's apartment, now even more pathetic because of the bug content. In any event, I am now flea-bitten in numerous spots on my legs and have dumped everything and anything that went to Erie in the washing machine. My first first of 2007: being flea-bitten. You can imagine my glee.

After this discovery, Dad decided he will set off (another) flea-bomb (yes, such things exist) in his apartment and we set off for the vet's office. Posie's flea collar was obviously not working properly. So I finally got to meet the famous "Dr. Dan," Posie's vet. He is young, as Dad said, and worked very well with Posie. I think she's just mellowing in old age, but she's less exciteable and skittish than she used to be. This does make her a fantastic driving companion, though, since she simply snoozes away in the backseat with a bark or a whine for the entire trip. What more could you ask for from a dog?

Anyway, post-vet, I returned to the apartment with Posie and Dad went to work. Dad's apartment, as I've said, is a rather pathetic dumping ground. The bookshelves from my bedroom in L.A. somehow migrated to Erie and became filled with various gifts I've bestowed upon my father over the years in hopes of bringing a little life to the apartment. Miniature maple syrup jars rest inside a disk made from an old vinyl LP. A home-made chess set - complete with pieces made out of rocks from our backyard in Williamsville - sits on a shelf unused with an old picture of the three of us from Christmas resting above it, frameless. Some pictures and comics I drew for his walls are nestled in the shelving unit and the walls remain bare. A gigantic, rock globe - a gift from Australia from Bubbie and Grandpa - also somehow went to Erie and now also lives on the shelf. An ancient television set occupies the main space of the lowest shelf, surrounded by home improvement magazines and five books. The television itself is not by any means in its prime and, if a viewer should care to flip around, he or she may only flip down in the channel numbers, never up again.

An unused treadmill and an equally abandoned miniature recording studio live in the opposite corner of the apartment. Dad's keyboard was loaned to the Erie Philharmonic and, as he sheepishly admits, he's never bothered to get it back. Two guitars are stacked in front of a mirror beside the bookshelf and our dining room table from L.A. lives almost under the iron stairs. For the longest time, Dad only had one chair since he was the only one who ever ate at the apartment. Finally, Mom and I came to visit and he had to buy two more. One as since disappeared so the table remains set for two. One chair is open for occupation and the other with a bag full of dog kibble the size of a small person living on it.

The kitchen is small but completely outfitted with appliances from the mid-1990s if not before. Commonly, the fridge houses an onion, a Brita water filter, some ketchup and whatever pasta sauce Mom made over the weekend and sent off to Erie for Dad to live off of for a week. I can only assume Dad doesn't eat at the apartment very often or that he gets take-out. Posie's dish - went she is in residence - just sits in the middle of the kitchen floor since the space is occupied so infrequently and it is in such close proximity to the enormous bag of kibble that will take her "twelve more years to get through," according to my father. But it was cheap so it came home.

The rest of the apartment consits of the loft upstairs which houses my dad's bed, closet and the only bathroom. The lighting throughout the apartment is shotty, with about two lamps and three lights. It very much suggests the life of someone who just goes to sleep when it gets dark rather than trying to artifically prolong the daylight hours. I know for a fact Dad doesn't do this (except maybe in summer when it's light until ten or later). Presumably he watches television until bed.

I don't know what inspired me to describe the place, I just felt like it. Hopefully you aren't too bored with such a description. Dad's apartment is truly something unto itself. I don't remember where I left off in the narrative but, suffice to say, on the drive home I mistakenly headed for Buffalo went I should have headed for Albany, drove around in Cheektowaga for a while and then finally rejoining the highway through a turn of luck. This eventually deposited me safely home at ten after three. All I want to do is sleep!