I’m always mentioning on here how I try to make dead things
from my past (dead people, friendships, places) come back to life by
researching them online. Well I spent
hours trying to use Google maps to get an aerial view of a house of a friend of
my mom’s that she doesn’t know anymore. This
man was a packrat, but if you have to be one, he was a pretty good one – his floors
were littered with money and old paperback books of Peanuts cartoons, his
favorite, and also weir things like that Snoopy Sno-Cone maker from the 1980’s
that many of us my age may remember.
This packrat indoors was cool in its way but I’m way too used to packrat
environs to be interested in all the half-buried treasure trash for long, but
he lived in a pretty neighborhood, and his back yard was absolutely one of a
kind. Hidden in the overgrown grass was
some of the most beautiful tilework I’ve ever seen. I had a suspicion that some famous tile
person must’ve made and laid these tiles him/herself they were so lovely. I can’t go back to that house but I thought
if I spent long enough on the computer, I could find a picture of it, at least,
but no dice.
However, I did find a current picture of the Glendale
bungalow where the ghost that leads me, Bill Tunilla, used to live, also from
google maps, and I’ll share it here. I remember
one time when I parked in the lot to the side of the bungalow, I walked past
his bedroom window to get to courtyard and his front yard, and I heard him say “Hi
Robin,” and, straining to see through the window screen, I saw him laying in
bed, reading a novel, maybe Saul Bellow or Barbara Pym, with his cat laying
down with him, and I just loved him so much then. My mom told me a serial killer used to live
at his apartment (after him) but I tried looking this up, and, nope.
