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Episode 40: Junior Redux

Writer's picture: Kristin LindstromKristin Lindstrom

There’s always something going on at Junior’s place. With five children, an absent mother, and the friends that come to drink and smoke, the front yard and porch are lively day in and day out.

My stepfather John can sit in his office and watch the shenanigans next door for hours. Maybe one of Junior's sons is digging a hole to China, or the kids are making a fort out of a dead washing machine. Sometimes we have to pull John out of his office to come downstairs for a meal.

Junior's addition is long gone, but this looks much the same,

sans the ladder.



At some point, the front porch pulls away from the house, leaving a gap of 12 inches. It remains in that state for a couple of years, until someone rats Junior out, and he is forced to repair it. The red carpet is still on the porch roof.

Sometimes Junior displays greater ambitions than normal. That is the case when he decides to affix an addition to the back of the house. At first this seems within reach; it will be a plain rectangle, the goal being to simply add more space to the house. No decorative touches to be included.

In the beginning, everything seems to go well. There is a hive of activity in the back yard as the framing goes up, the underfloor is laid, and some inexpensive protective fabric of some kind is wrapped on the outside.

But slowly the work winds down. And soon, when you look out Mom’s dining room windows, you see a forlorn, incomplete structure with a ladder for the back doorsteps.

It will remain this way for years.

Fights at Junior’s are a regular feature, whether among friends or within the family. One fight in particular will affect Junior the most. His eldest son has a girlfriend, a girlfriend who is rarely happy about anything, apparently. One night, after drinking for hours, she waits till everyone in the house is asleep and sets a fire in the upstairs bedroom.


It only takes one to ruin things for

everyone.

Anybody knows that if you want a successful house fire, you set it on the ground floor. Nevertheless, the fire causes a lot of damage that Junior can’t afford to repair. The Cabin John Fire Department is a half block away, and they do the best they can. The thing is, Junior doesn’t seem to have anywhere else to go.

With remarkable tenacity, Junior sets out to get the house to at least a partially livable condition. In a note of irony, he convinces the Hispanic family in the house behind his to run a heavy electrical cable between their homes so he can have some electricity. This family has forgiven him, evidently, for siccing the authorities on them all those years ago.

Junior manages to stay in the house a long time, considering its dismal condition. Eventually, though, he has to leave. The last I heard about him is that he learned how to read so can now drive and that he moved to the Eastern Shore, which seems like a good place for him.

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