Grandpa’s House on a Cloudy Day

Early Saturday morning on a cloudy day, Dana- a petite lady pulls her 1967 red Covair with white convertible top up our concrete driveway and stops in front of our house. The white house with green shutters stands out in this dreary, gray sky.

Dana opens the door and slides off her black vinyl upholstery seat. Dana is wearing blue jeans, white converse sneakers and a colorful blouse with red, white, and blue colors.

Dana rings the doorbell as my brother Hal- a dark hair kid age 5 with blue jeans, red converse sneakers runs out the door toward the car and climbs into the back seat on the right side.

I(Johnny)- age 6 blond hair with blue jeans, yankee tee shirt follows my brother into the corvair on the left side of the car.

Dana follows and slides into the driver’s seat.  The trip to Ranklin Lakes takes about 1 hour to Grandpa’s house. We take off down South Maple Ave. for about 15 minutes southward toward 287 north.

Johnny and Hal talk the whole trip about the sights along the way as they pass Central School where they both go to school. The kids at the school are also playing outside on the basketball court as well as numerous kids playing soccer with parents on the sidelines.

They smell the Oreo cookies as they pass the Nabisco plant. Mm love those cookies!

At Nabisco, they turn on 287 north for a 40-minute ride.

My brother and I are excited about going to Grandpa’s house. My mother told me that my grandparents just moved to Ranklin Lakes a few weeks ago after 54 years living in Rattlesnake River.

While we played in the car, we pass the Roverton flea market on the east side of the road with a bunch of tents and cars parked all over the parking lot. Cars are moving in and out of the parking lot constantly.

Further down the highway we pass the Ranklin Lakes fire house which has 2 shinny fire engines outside being washed outside. The firemen are all dressed up in their fire gear such as their blue coats and pants with black boots.

A few minutes later we got off the exit to Ewing Ave. Gosh we were almost there, how exciting!

 We passed about 4 streets until taking a right onto lower cross road and 10 houses later we pulled into a blacktop driveway where we see this spectacular white house with black shutters, green plush grass, and finely cut hedges.

When we stop, we see a rustic horse fence that encompasses the property for a long distance. Dana, Hal, and I get out of the car at the same time.

My brother and I run to the fence. We see rolling hills, and numerous oak trees spread out all over the property. At the bottom we see a massive lake with a few small boats on the water.

We are excited that we have arrived at grandpa’s house. We continue to look around and see rows of Swiss chard and corn on the left side of the property where Grandpa is working. Grandpa sees us and walks up the hill toward us.

“Hello, Hal, Johnny and Dana, what do you all think of the new property?”

“Grandpa the property looks grand with your fence, crops, boats and lake. “

“Thank you, Johnny. Let us all go inside and see the inside of the house. Grandma is also here and will make everybody some lunch.”