A step back in time folks. This time seventeen years ago when Bill and I lived in Pennsylvania on 6.875 acres of wooded land on the side of a hill in East Brandywine Township, outside Downingtown, PA.
This video is in three parts. The first part is me hamming it up shoveling snow from our home in the middle of the woods. When we lived in Pennsylvania we often got the big snow storms that resulted in a ground cover of snow until early spring. This was one of them.
The second part of the video I'm visiting my good friend (from Army days) Bob McCamley who lived on twenty-two acres of wooded land outside Georgetown Delaware. Bob was my inspiration to move to Delaware, which I did in November of 2006 and where I am now, typing this blog for posterity. It was a foggy day when I visited Bob. Sad to say, my friend Bob passed away five years ago and his double-wide home in the middle of his woods in Delaware is now being slowly engulfed by vegetation. Very sad whenever I go by his road, I can no longer see or even get into the road to his home. Sad, sad. The house is in limbo because his partner Jim is now in assisted living.
The third part of this video is of my late friend Ed Cage's home at 206 Laurel Street in Rehoboth Beach, Delaware. Ed has also passed on and his lovely original Rehoboth Beach cottage has since been torn down and replace with one of those McMansions that are gradually changing the character of Rehoboth Beach. Ed had asked me to take photos of his recently renovated kitchen so he cold show those photos to his friends. I agreed to do so on the stipulation that I could stay at his place for the weekend, which I did. This was where I took the opportunity to get the lay of the land because at this time I was considering eventually moving to Delaware because I could no longer keep up with the ever increasing Pennsylvania school and real estate taxes (and state income tax, wage tax, per capita tax, sales tax, and country personal property tax.) Lots of taxes in Pennsylvania folks which I don't miss at all. Here in Delaware I have ONE tax, a school-property tax with is about one-fifth of what I was paying in Pennsylvania.
I miss living in Pennsylvania and our wonderful home but we (me and Bill) have a wonderful home here in Delaware, good neighbors (not so nice in PA) and others. Although ironically, the gay community here in southern Delaware hasn't been too friendly, they're more of a cliquish social club for retired Washington DC government la de dah workers and Baltimore retirees. I occasionally get their publication Letters put out by Camp Rehoboth, they all seem to be having a good time and I am happy for them but whenever I tried to interact with them I was met with disdain and a "you don't belong in our crowd" attitude. Fortunately I haven't encountered that coldness from my neighbors (straight), co-workers and others I have met and become friends with since we moved to Delaware. Maybe I'm not gay enough (the drag thing you know, they're really into perpetuating the gay stereotype of drag everything). But there I go, going off on one of my stream of consciousness rants, which I am prone to do on this, MY BLOG where I can express my true feelings. Yes, I've met a few gay friends since we moved to Delaware (Bob, Chuck to name a few) but nobody close. My best friend outside of Delaware lives in Canada. And you all know who that is.
Back to Ed's place (he never made it to the In Crowd either), when he died in 2015 his place was put up for sale for $399,000; renovated kitchen an all (I loved his kitchen). His place sold for $633,000 and the new owners promptly TORE IT DOWN. If you're ever in Rehoboth Beach on 206 Laurel Street (three blocks from the ocean, great location), check it out. It's a three story McMansion rental with a swimming pool. Poor Ed would be turning over in his grave.
The video is only thirty minutes long and if you can tolerate the unevenness of my defective video camera (I dropped it once and it skipped ever since whenever I moved), it's an enjoyable video of a time past. A moment in time which we will never see again but will be memorialized forever because I posted it on this blog. Yes, that means long after I'm gone (which shouldn't be too long now, check back here in ten years), you all with have this to remember me by.
Enjoy!!
