Indian Wells

You see, back when my parents bought it, it wasn't called "27". It was just Indian Wells. That's all you had to say. There was no number, or if there was, there was no need to use it. It was easy to give directions. Just turn on Indian Wells off Montauk Highway, you'll see the Mobil gas station at the corner. The livery stable will be on your left, and then a big white house, that's Mrs. Lester's. The next big house is ours. The shingles are turning gray, you can't miss the front porch.

The tall house was long and rectangular, and went far back into the property from the street. The driveway ran straight back the length of the house, the small round pebbles earth-toned. The house was faced with a wide front porch and large front door. There was lattice work around the left end of the porch where we sat and ate most meals from June to September. The right side had cushioned furniture given to my parents by my grandparents, Doc and Flo Feleppa. He worked very hard as a general practitioner and they could afford beautiful and well-made things. After those big summer Sunday dinners we'd sit in the darkness on the wrought iron furniture and listen to my grandparents stories. The only light would be the red tips of lit cigarettes. The ash trays were clam shells we found on the beach that day. That was back when you used to see tons of starfish and horseshoe crabs washed up too.

You'd enter the front door to a main stairwell and two front rooms. The formal parlor was on the left. I remember a peachy pink hue and a stand-up piano. On the right was a room with so many built-in bookcases it quickly became the library. It had a fireplace that was inoperable by the time my family moved in. That was 1980. The house was built in 1808 and having seen another houses of similar age at the Queens County Farm Museum I know that room was originally the kitchen. Under the stairs was a little nook where the phone was kept. The living room was the largest room in the house and went the entire width of the original 1808 structure. The heater in the basement was the biggest piece of machinery I had ever seen. It would rumble to life and push heat through the massive grill situated in the middle of the living room next to the wood burning stove. On winter mornings it was customary to come downstairs and pause on top of the square to let the heat billow up through your pajamas. Each light and piece of furniture had a story, where it came from, how it was found, how it was brought back to life and made beautiful again. The couches, stereo and TV got good wear, as did the smaller round eating table. The pump organ was operated by foot pedals and with only one working it took a lot of effort to breath life into it. My father being a great photographer and lover of fine art the walls were always well decorated. The bathroom was small with a window that looked out towards the backyard. Blue jays would perch in the wisteria just outside and squawk like hell in the summer. My fathers office was off the living room too, a well-tended sea of papers, art deco figurines, electric typewriters, and eventually a computer and copier. The stack of Playboy behind the front desk I would be sure to leave carefully the way I found them.

Most people that knew us knew to enter the house through the back door. Technically you were entering the addition put on the house that was built in the 1890's. This extension was the reason it had been turned into a boarding house by the turn of the 20th Century. Supposedly some known historical figures had passed through those doors and stayed in those rooms. An ex-president even. No one would doubt the spirits were still there. You walked up the massive stone steps by my mother's rock garden and into the dining room and kitchen, where you were usually sure to find someone.

The dining room was a step lower than the living room. My parents loved the discovery that came with such an amazing old house. My mom wasted no time getting a crew together to rip up the newer floor boards in search of the more attractive and appropriate wider planks that laid beneath. Determined that they were under there my parents urged people to keep going, layer after layer. They stopped when they hit dirt. The floor boards would have to be brought in, and so they were. For the kitchen they decided to go with brick, recycled of course. The custom-made kitchen island was oversized and almost seemed to anchor the back end of the house. It matched in size and seriousness the restaurant-grade stove that was a bear to move into place. Shelves would have to be built for the copper lobster pots left over from my parents restaurant, The Royale Fish. That little brick and wood kitchen held more pots and pans than you've ever seen, and we would have the parties to use them all. I forgot about the stone sink we used to dry the big dishes in. It could hold about 4 full-sized bluefish in ice, or be a perfect tub for little ones when my cousins began to form families of their own. Nothing was too formal. Everything was there to be used and enjoyed. The white metal pitcher would be a perfect vase for Black-Eyed Susans. This was years before anyone had ever heard of a woman named Martha, and my mom had more tricks up here sleeve anyway. The cow bells sat in a line on the low shelf between the dining room and the kitchen stove. They were always a crowd pleaser and made it into a recording or two of my brothers, the musicians in the family. I'd sit on the stools on the other side of the island and do my homework while mom prepped dinner or spread her paperwork out on the rectangular dining table. No one was supposed to know that the table top was a recycled door, but I didn't know any better. You had to be of a certain age to be able to open the heavy drawers that held the place mats, napkins, and silverware. A huge window looked south, beneath it a sea of African Violets. We had our places at the table. Everyone knew that if you were invited for dinner you stayed. The door was always open, as was the opposite door that led to the bricked patio that Billy Fantini laid one summer. That is where I would be sent with a pair of kitchen sheers to gather handfuls of herbs: basil, oregano, marjoram, thyme, lemon thyme, and rosemary. The peas and peppers and tomatoes were planted to the left of the herbs, softening the southeast corner of the brick rectangle. The perennial garden and cutting garden were off in the distance near the Privet hedge that abutted the Miller's property. From the patio a small brick path wandered off behind the massive Spruce tree.

We knew everyone around us. That was when it wasn't weird or uncommon to walk over and introduce yourself to someone you didn't know. A bunch of the houses were only occupied during the summer, or occasionally on off-season weekends. When we'd get a large snowfall my mother would offer my shoveling services to neighbors for a nominal fee. I would shrug and make a face and go about getting my coat and boots because I knew there was nothing I could say to get me out of it. My mom is a delegator, what can I say. The sign on the porch of the pink house said "welcome" in a local Native American dialect. Directly across, Mrs. Stoller would only come out for the summer as she spent the winter in the UK. She had no car and instead rode her bike with big baskets to the local farmer's market. Different families would rent and live in the house during winter, and we would become close with all of them. I grew up playing G.I Joe with the Menu boys. Years later when the daughter of the following family had a crush on me I had no idea how to react. Mr. Hood drove the blue Volvo stationwagon you'd see. He was retired from the CIA and I was always intrigued by that. Years later I would come to find my present boss was once an employee of his, hired for information gathering I was told. The Brews had a restaurant in the city but we knew them better for a firetruck they owned and kept in our barn. One couple across the street and up a few houses kept their fancy car in the large converted livery stable my parents now owned and rented space in. They'd get a call on a Friday or Saturday and it was my job to grab the right key out of the dish in the pass-through and go open up the basement doors for Mr. Rivkin. My grandmother on my mom's side still talks about that beautiful green Jag.

The bedrooms were upstairs throughout the house. When you got to the top of the stairs my room was on the left, my mother's sitting room on the right. I remember the day I was tall enough to reach the pull chord for the light fixture situated at the top of the stairs. You would wrap around and follow the curved wooden rail to my brothers room in the front of the house, across from my parents bedroom. All of the doors were old wood and solid, sanded smooth following the generations of use. The little bathroom in the center of the upstairs that everyone shared a modern family would likely laugh at. I liked the faded pink tiles and big tub. The skylight didn't open but in the winter you might get hit with a few renegade snowflakes that would sneak through its old seal. The long hallway went back to three bedrooms. Stacy's room was the first, named for my cousin who stayed many summers and helped out at the restaurant. The second room was Tim's. It was like the forbidden lair with his old dirty pin-ups hanging everywhere. The last room was my mom's office. She had found an amazing fabric wallpaper that was rich with color and floral design. The hallway had a hand-painted mural that went the entire length. There was talk about removing the layers of paint to expose it again, but the proper tools and time never quite made it high enough on the list of priorities. The wall opposite the bedrooms was covered with framed pictures of family members, every shape and size and color.

The house was a lot to take care of. But it wasn't really like work, it was just what we did. It was part of living in such a special place. The Climbing Hydrangea was a beast covering the northern-facing side of the extension. The Wisteria my dad had to keep close tabs on so it wouldn't grow into the overhang off the back of the dining room. The giant copper tub, used for a hamper outside my brothers room, would need to be polished every so often. There was copper and brass everywhere in that house. We all became very comfortable using the metal polish called Noxon that came in a bright green bottle. Furniture and artwork and the color of the rooms was always changing. When my mom found young people she liked that weren't quite fit for restaurant work she'd offer them a job to wield a paintbrush or strip some old doors she salvaged at the town dump. Some would even be offered the job of caring for my brother and I through the summer. You didn't last if you couldn't roll with the punches and adapt to the task at hand. Otherwise, it was easy to become a member of the family, and so our family was always growing. So many visitors that house kept warm and happy and protected.


Slowly the back yard of brambles got cleared out and replaced with large, sweeping lawns. The hill down to the lower part of the property wasn't quite big enough to sled on, but we tried regardless. For the first few years there were horses in the yard adjacent and my parents would bring me down there and lift me up to feed them carrots. It turned out they weren't much for cherry tomatoes. The Cherry trees were just far enough apart that a hammock fit perfect. One part of the yard was never neatened up and remained a wild little section. People at one point must have used the spot to bury their garbage. So many years later we would use trowels to unearth relics from the past that were still intact. We called it "bottle digging" and it was a great weekend ritual for years. Perhaps in part the reason I decided to major in anthropology so many years later. It's no wonder I became a horticulturist. Some of the trees I remember best. Surveying them and then driving around town after hurricanes in the fall.


Behind the Spruce the brick path led to a unique little structure. The dilapidated shed was rebuilt by Detlef Pump with recycled materials and turned into my father's new office. Detlef had a love of old construction, tools and restoration that was truly extraordinary. Combined with my folks finds they were quite a team. The big windows came from the dump, the stained glass I think came from somewhere in New England. I know the great arching French doors came from an old firehouse in Massachusetts. The floor was bowling alley lanes. It was fun to tease my dad when he would complain about having to go to work and then retreat down the brick path in his moccasins with his cup of coffee and ice water.


There was so much more that isn't coming to me right now. That was an era full of so much detail. I hope more memories come back so I can keep adding them to this post. This year would be the 200th anniversary of the house Mr. Barnes built. And alas, all that is there now is a cleared lot and my father's office, painfully alone on the sweeping acre of land and mature trees. We moved out of the house and on to our own new adventures years ago, but I think we all thought that house would always be there. Now all we have are the memories. Luckily they are rich and vivid and part of us, and will never be torn down. Friends and relatives will bring up things we forgot about, like the staff parties and the holiday feasts and nights sneaking down to the pool for a drunken skinny dip. Some say that a one's spirit stays alive as long as people remember and cherish it, and in the case of the house on Indian Wells, I think the same holds true. We will all miss that house terribly, but our memories and stories will keep us smiling for the rest of our lives.