Before the fire...before the apartment, there was the Farm in Pungo, where I and my animal friends all lived so happily.
i had admired this old house since my high school years, always dreaming of buying, or at the least, renting it.
I'd pass it in my roamings with my Floyd E. Kellam High school friends, and in the summer, the surrounding fields nearly swallowed it up.
Well, one day came, and Captain and I, and Berkeley and Kipling, Timorie and Monster all moved to the house I came to call "Spellhouse"..
It was an idyllic existence for two years, and we planted all manner of wonderful things, for us, as well as for the wildlife who lived there.
We planted figs, apples, pears, a huge sunflower maze, tomatoes, bell peppers (every color), strawberries among the flower gardens, gingko, live oak, black walnuts, pecans, peas, cabbage, carrots, blackberries, elderberries, etc.
But, the location was too far away for most of my clients, and eventually they all trailed off. I was too far away from anything, so when the car was taken, I could not get to additional work. Then the phone was cut off, and after this, we simply lost everything.
I pulled all of us out of this, keeping us all together, with great difficulty, and even camped for two weeks in a tent, and fished to feed us, before finding a motel we could live in while saving for a new home. We were heart-broken at the loss of our Spellhouse, but life goes on.
After a year saving in a motel, I located the little, old apartment on Phillip Avenue. But finally, a kitchen again! And privacy.
We lived there for 9 months. While there, I had major surgery twice in January of '99, a month apart, draining what finances I had left.
So I took a job as a cabdriver for a few months to be able to support us while recuperating, with Captain as my co-pilot and head of security everyday, in the cab.
Things were going fairly well. We had a routine, I was healing slowly, and we felt secure again, even without security.
Then...came the fire.
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The Happiness Before The Storm
