oddity magnet

So the other day I was at Shadowland in Wallingford, a “very unique store” filled with oddities and curiosities, as well as unusual music and books. This was my second trip to the shop; at Eric the owner’s behest, I had returned to drop off a few signed copies of Connecticut Curiosities: 3rd Edition for him to sell there.

As I was chatting with Eric and browsing around the shop, admiring the unusual artworks, taxidermy critters and other assorted weird items, I started having flashbacks to my college days when I used to regularly house sit for one of my professors.

I’ll never forget the first time Dr. Hawkins asked me to come to his office after class to discuss “a job opportunity.” On the desk of his windowless office in the basement of Engleman Hall was proudly displayed a baseball autographed by Pete Gray. I took one look at it and immediately asked, “How the heck did he sign it?” Dr. Hawkins’ delighted smile instantly told me that he knew I was the right man to watch his house and the cache of unusual items contained within. (You know, because it was back before the interwebz were a gleam in Al Gore’s eye, and I didn’t need Google to know who Pete Gray was.)

The “Hawk’s Nest,” as my buddies Steve and CC dubbed it, was the closest thing I’ve seen to a real-life Addams Family house. It was a dusty, musty Victorian throwback, a three-story edifice with long uneven hallways, period fixtures and ornate wallpaper. The cramped rooms were chocked full of vintage furniture, old paintings and pictures, unusual memorabilia, marble busts, taxidermy and other odd baseball-related items that the eccentric Dr. Hawkins—an antiques dealer and huge baseball fan—had collected over the years. Like many old homes, there were constant creaks and cracks, and it even had a giant grandfather clock would even bong loudly on the hour.

Zoinks, right?! I would’ve liked to have a box of Scooby Snacks the first night I stayed. I “slept” with the TV on—really, turned and tossed until dawn is more like it. On another occasion, I was awakened in the middle of the night to find Dr. Hawkins’ cat at the side of the bed, bathed in the electronic glow of the TV, tail and hackles raised, staring intently at a nondescript spot on the wall. It didn’t move for about 10 minutes. Like, totally freaky.

Of course, there were other “charms” of the place. I had probably house sat for a half dozen times before one night I found myself staring at the red velvet curtain hanging on the wall behind the TV at the end of the king-sized bed. “Hey, that’s an inside wall!” it finally dawned on me. “Why does it need a curtain?”

I got up and pulled back the velvet …. and discovered the entire wall was covered with Victorian-era pin-ups and other vintage (although fairly tame) girlie pictures. Ah, the bachelor life!

Still, even though it was a bit creepy at time, it was still a good deal for me—within walking distance of campus and a great place to crash after hanging out with my friends who lived on campus (Dr. Hawkins went away to public speaking tournaments many weekends). And I was being paid!

Of course, I always welcomed company when house-sitting at the Hawk’s Nest. A number of friends stayed with me on different occasions, which didn’t seem to bother Dr. Hawkins, except once.

On the Monday after he returned, I went to check in with him in his office. When I arrived, there members of his public speaking team there, but when he saw me at the door, he stopped talking to them and said, “Well, well, hello Ray! Did you have a good weekend?”

“Uh, yeah,” I said, immediately uncomfortable as I noticed that the guys and gals assembled seemed to be giggling a bit. “Any problems with the house?”

“No, not at all,” he said, handing me a brown paper bag. “Although you left these behind on the nightstand.”

Quizzically, I took the bag and reached into it. Without thinking about what I was doing, I pulled out a pair of obviously feminine earrings. My face went bright red as the laughter burst out around the room.

“Uh, wow,” I stammered, desperately wishing to disappear on the spot. “My favorites! Thanks.”

Good times, good times. Still, I watched the house for years, and was very comfortable to the weirdness of it all—maybe a sign of curiosities to come.

Oddly enough, the last time I saw Dr. Hawkins was at his wedding, held at the oldest Quaker meetinghouse in New York City and where he was marrying a woman half his age and seemingly twice his height. He sold the old house and moved to Minnesota (without the new wife, apparently), where he’s found a new home and may possibly never read this as he apparently eschews everything electronic.

Still, this wasn’t my only experience with the bizarre and freakish in my college days. I used to work at a grocery store in Milford, and there used to be a … “family” who came in regularly, seemingly just to torture me.

They can be described vividly in many terms, but I’ll just go with inbred mutant unwashed white trash freaks. People joke about the Melon Heads comin’ to get them, but these … folk … were Deliverance incarnate …..

Or so they seemed to me. In retrospect, they were probably a poor, uneducated bunch who meant well, but over the years, my overly imaginative brain has added a bit of hyperbole to the memories. Let’s just say they were a bit “unusual.”

Regardless, for reasons I’ll never quite understand, they “loved” me. They had one wild-eyed daughter who especially smitten and would stalk me though the aisles of the store, sharing cringeworthy stories of her sexual awakenings. The father would make comments to the effect that he couldn’t wait for me to … “join their clan.”

[*shiver*]

Their old Buick LeSabre (with the snow tires on year round) is burned vividly into my mind’s eye—I still get a little queasy when I think about the day they almost ran me over in the parking lot while I was gathering shopping carts, how they had all the windows down, were bangin’ on the doors, hootin’ ‘n hollerin’ about how they almost got me that time. Like baggin’ me was worth big points on some sort of hillbilly bingo card.

Or maybe they were just glad to see me and they were just trying to be nice in their own, sorta weird, way. Who knows?

You know, in all my imaginings about my end, to this day, I still think it somehow ultimately involves them.

In my fevered nightmares, I’m walking along an abandoned road when that old LeSabre comes whizzing past me, then pulls around to a screeching halt. The whole clan is in the car still, hootin’ ‘n hollerin’, the little freak girl now all growed up, bouncing up and down in the backseat and ready to take a mate. The door flies open, and the father’s grizzled cackle fills my ears as I get in. The door slams shut and they take me to their dilapidated trailer-filled compound deep in the woods on Melon Head Road, where they chain me to a radiator and make their brood queen. And I’m never seen or heard from again …

A fitting odd end for an oddity magnet.