My anniversary is in nine days, and that is pretty awesome.

Not only did I get married in October, but I also moved into the place I am writing this from on Halloween night of 2001. My first trick-or-treater was some 17-year-old in a metal band t-shirt. I was eating pizza and sitting on the floor with no furniture, so he was told to kick rocks.

I can’t believe I have been here for so long, but here we are.

Honestly, it’s a luxury to have a cheap home base in some ways. I save a lot of dough living here, and it also allows me to travel and own dogs. Not too bad.

On the subject of my living situation:

The Trailer Park Files isn’t dead. I still live here, and I still have a lot to say. I am just swamped with other stuff. I take writing about the Park oddly seriously, so if I don’t have time to go all in on a piece, then I put it on the back burner. I wasn’t happy with my early ones, even though I left them up.

Here I am still in my small place in a small town. As far as being in the sticks goes, I am like 30 to 40 minutes from everywhere. I actually like the driving. People in the city think that’s nuts, I am sure. People in Wyoming, though? They get it.

To get into the spooky spirit of the season, I will mention something I just learned recently about my town. I live 5 minutes away from the grave of a suspected vampire. It would seem the girl had tuberculosis or some other malady that makes blood come out of your mouth. After she died, they buried her body and some of her organs together, only they are in separate coffins. Got to keep those vampires down somehow. If organ removal prevents the undead from coming back, who am I to judge? Maybe she really was a vampire, and the burial ritual is the only thing holding her back from feasting upon us.

That same cemetery also has a British soldier from the Revolutionary War buried there as well.

Fuck, I love New England. It feels old. Europeans would laugh at this, but we are a part of America with almost 400 years of consistent history. It is common to find old foundations, root cellars, and stacked stone walls deep in the woods around here. It’s all so incredible.

That’s not to downplay the thousands of years of indigenous culture in parts of the country. The Spanish were in America before the Massachusetts Bay Company as well, but I digress.

As for Native American history, the area that I live in was the site of King Phillip’s War, which started in 1675. Phillip was the name the English gave to Metacom. Metacom was a man who led a coalition of tribes in a war against the English. He came within a whisker of throwing them back into the sea. 

Imagine that. How different would my home be?

I’ve mentioned it before, but history is what steered me toward literature, including early American literature, which I adore. I still keep meaning to go to the spot where Jonathan Edwards dropped Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God, but Enfield, Connecticut is out of the way. If I have free time, I would rather bring my dog to Hardwick or some place to find my own inspiration to write. Some of my greatest ideas have occurred while staring out of the front window of the Ware, MA Dunkin’ Donuts. That being said, Mark Twain’s Hartford home is a museum, so maybe a planned out Connecticut field trip to multiple locations is in order.

My brother lives in Enfield as well, or did at least. Not the dipshit brother that I have mentioned before, my other one. I don’t talk to him either. Frankly, he is weird as fuck. Trust me on this. Weird as fuck.

I was actually in the same class with my niece at Springfield College at one point. Professor Van Driessen taught that course. While we get along well, my estrangement from my weird-ass brother made our group project both awkward and short-lived.

Even though my brother lived like 15 minutes from campus, my niece lived in the dorms, for whatever that’s worth.

I love history, and I love reading. I also love video games. Stay tuned for the next piece that I write up to connect these dots. It is certainly a Kou Shibusawa Production. Even if you don’t care about 30-year-old Nintendo games, I would recommend checking it out. They are merely the catalyst. 

Stay crescent fresh,

JTC