I sat in Stewart’s, my usual place most mornings now, after sleeping on a bench in the Homeless Veterans Park, watching another row of houses being taken down. The past couple days, watching 7 living trees being killed, on the street below. The beautiful logs being fed into a shredder, the pile of wet, muddy mulch spilling over the dirty truck. I thought of how beautiful the fires up to the lake would be to have that wood, after I said a prayer.
I watched numerous times the wonton destruction of trees and shrubs up to our Lakehouse. I was grateful each Fall to be able to buy a cord or face-cord of wood, I still get them mixed up. Then spend all day on a beautiful Fall Saturday—stacking it! It’s not easy work. I preferred carrying it on the wheelbarrow to bring inside rather than stack it, but I never complained. I loved having the security of wood! I felt empowered in ways I had felt so helpless growing up. I loved making and tending the fires; both inside and outside of our Lakehouse all the time, even on cool Summer nights.
Often cold, my mother would tell me there’s no money for heat, “put a sweater on if your cold!” I was always cold; sleeping in layers of sweaters, socks, and flannels with tights. We didn’t have leggings back then. I wasn’t allowed to wear pants. There weren’t any that were long enough or fit my “curves,” anyway. The popular girls wore guys Levi’s, but you couldn’t be curvy. I always had too much “junk in the trunk!”—called “thunder-thighs,” by the mean girls that wanted to beat me up, but couldn’t for one reason or another. Mostly because alone they weren’t all that tough.
My classmate moved to Kline Street shortly after I moved to East Main Street; by then she didn’t want to be my friend anymore. We had been friends for awhile after my mother got a new boyfriend and we moved into a “flat,” up over the Hideaway bar on East Main Street in the “East-End”—the bad part of the city.
Back then I didn’t know that most of these “friendship breakups,” weren’t just the catty kind that sometimes happen with girlfriends that come and go when your young—girls can be so vicious! but now know something much more sinister was going on. It was a continual pattern throughout school.
This old childhood girlfriend, a teacher now, was recently talking at our City Hall about, “Labor Camps!” Her parents had been in one. I never knew, I came across the article in our local paper, The Recorder, looking for places to live. I had been looking repeatedly since being violently put on the street from my 20yr home that I loved and labeled a “Crazy Prostitute!” I was told now, “to go walk the streets,” by my mother, abusive cops, and everyone I thought I had known all these years!
It was modest, small 2-family, we paid $40,000 for it. My ex had bought it right before we started dating, he said. We had talked of living together; together all the time after we met, I stayed there every weekend, but everyone was Catholic, which was made a very big deal of! We would not live-together until married, but the house was to be both of ours! Once I moved in, after we married, everything was 50/50 and the fact we were married automatically made it both of ours! My ex, his aunt, his mother and my in-laws all had lawyers, so I was constantly told things were fine whenever I questioned the “Estate!”
We were also caring for his blind mother, so her house, financials, and care was interwoven with mine. Names like “executor, life-tendency, and landlord sounded so serious all those years ago! especially to someone like myself forced to grow up on Welfare even though my grandparents owned “Land!” and even had “farm-hands,” like servants.
Grandparents, I was not allowed to see on my fathers side owned a house and my aunt and uncle that I was also denied seeing on my fathers side owned a beautiful big Lakehouse that I thought of as a “rockstar mansion”—I loved it, but was not allowed to see them after Judge Sise denied me being able to see my family! My dad was a musician, played guitar, and had a successful band. I loved him, going to his “gigs,” and camping on the Sacandaga Lake NY down the road where my grandparents had land and where 25yrs later me and my ex also bought a Lake property—Land!
I was thrilled and determined to find a way to get over the pain of what my grandmother had endured from being denied the land of her parents because women could not own property and her brother sold it—it broke my grandmothers heart. We had been going to the little “camp,” his aunt and uncle owned a couple years by that time to visit.
After her second husband died, she wanted to sell it and asked if we wanted to by it. By then I was expected to care more and more for her and her sister, my mother-n-law because she gave us such a good deal on the camp—$40,000 same as our home. We now had 2 mortgages, but we both made the same amount of money about $30,000 and we could certainly do it my ex said. He met with his aunt, mother, and brother all the time! Lawyers were all involved and even though I complained my name was not on the properties, I was told repeatedly I was making too much out of this—we were “Mr and Mrs!”—everything 50/50.
I wanted to bring my grandmother to visit, but she died right before we acquired it, shortly after we married. I was finally back on the lake and would often walk past and tell stories to my ex-husband of my family, me and my dad, camping at BirchHaven camping grounds; a stones throw from my now little owned cabin! We did so much work on it over the 20yrs there; it went from 3 seasons to just about all 4! The original dream we agreed on from the beginning was to retire there; turning the little camp into a “Lakehouse!” and spending the entire Summer; I could ski and him snowmobiling in the Winter! What a dream come true I was lead to believe, but I was never able to go skiing. I had no money usually after all the bills were paid, but he went snowmobiling all the time with all his friends!
I sold the trailer I had been living in for a year that my grandmother had left me for $12,000. She had just passed away and had worked so hard to pay it off the last 15yrs of her life before getting ill—she died at 70, too young. My ex-husband proposed! after 6yrs of a love-bombing courtship! I thought it had been worth more, it was like new, but I was told by Judith Ann Reality, who over the years helped us get tenants; that’s all it was worth!—it was like new! I thought. Recently, they denied me help getting an apartment when I asked, thinking of all the times they were involved in what had become our “Rental business.” Snickering and sarcastic, when I was put on the street, promising me one; then telling me when I got ready to see it that it was gone!
I worked on our “home,” endlessly for 20yrs, so grateful I had “paid off a mortgage!” My ex bragged about the $10,000 he put in it to start, but I contributed the $12,000 from my grandmother! Paying it off in 15yrs was a big deal! Everything from the beginning was 50/50 my ex-husband explained.
He had it all worked out—our budget. Income-taxes always went into “projects!” We never bought things on credit and carried no debt except the mortgages. I eventually bought a new car, which caused a huge fight. We made the same amount of money, but I had an hour commute and he had 15min, but always got the SUV, garage from the neighbor I did snow for, and car-starters—how stupid I was! I was so young thinking I was achieving the, “American Dream,” only to realize today; the wealthy always have land, properties, and connections to keep people like me on the street—deliberately! Regardless of how hard you work, how many sacrifices, how unfair—the predators don’t care! My in-laws always had money, but I was always told how poor they were!
Shortly after we married and we bought the Lakehouse from my ex husbands mentally ill Aunt we took care of, she bragged quite often over the years about how Paul Tonko had helped her get jobs. One time at Mohasco and then when that closed, she was able to get a job with the State having him as a reference. I was 27yrs old when I met her and of course was impressed!
I watched him come into McDonalds turn his back to me and sit across the way at another table. He seemed to be interviewing someone. They talked in a way that they weren’t concerned about being over-heard. It sounded like an interview and his back once again to me when he left—deliberate. I have since learned about being givin “the back,” it seems silly, but this is the behaviors these grown men do. I had been givin the back numerous times over the years, but didn’t know what it meant, today I do. It used to do as intended; make you feel ignored, silenced, and not good enough to be helped or considered. Today as a grown woman, I see it for the childish, sexist, white-supremist cult-like behavior it is.
I had made it know I was “Peacefully Protesting,” on the abandoned porch, but that had been ignored. I also did a 12-day “Hunger-Strike,” protesting the theft of my sweet dog by vicious animal-control, 20yrs of personal belongings in storage, and “Bail Reform,” but all was ignored at the jail after I wrote numerous grievances. Key Bank refusing me my debit card after I was beat-up and it was stolen by cops. I reported it like all the other thefts, but ignored—a regular occurrence by then.
I was accused of being a “mentally-ill Prostitute” that just refused to eat by guards that taunted about using my little dog as “Bait,” and telling a group of us that “Sexual-assaults are no big deal!” It was a horrible experience! Even my mother visited and refused to pay the $100 bail, laughing with her friends daughter and her granddaughter from when we lived in East End. Both guards now, the granddaughter threatening to “become a cop and shoot me!” I wrote a grievance about that also, but it was ignored too. She had also threatened to shoot others!
I watched Mr Tonko just about run me over at RiteAid, “how u doin?” he gruffly said and swiftly brushed by, “not too good, I said feeling hopeless. I was being attacked, made fun of continuously for “carrying a duffel-bag,” which became a symbol of me “shacking up with men,” the special-needs tenants on Green Street that kept calling the cops told them and everyone else after cops took my car.
By then, I was being accused of smelling so bad, no one wanted to use the bathroom after me; would lock it, and snicker about me being a Prostitute. Men were giving me $20 then expecting sex. I thought at first it was compassion for being homeless, but learned it was nothing of the sort! I was being attacked everywhere I went. Public places like Dunkin Donuts and McDonalds and all the apartments I tried to rent. My “smelling,” was also a big deal at the jail. Filthy talk about my vagina, which became absurd when grown women Prostitutes and Guards didn’t know that what you eat affects how you smell! We had to actually discuss this. I didn’t have any infections. I ate very clean—veterinarian, until jailed. I’ll save you all the specifics.
The food there was unfit for human consumption. It was all lies, but it didn’t seem to matter when there were this many people involved. People I haven’t seen in 20yrs, people I didn’t know, and people tasked to help with crimes, abuse, and stalking. The “Skinny jail,” as it was called, shortly after, lost a lawsuit about the food there. Another lawyer classmate trying to argue how good it was. I remarked on Twitter he should go there for a week and eat the food there then get back to us.
I got “the back” again when Mr Tonko came into Stewart’s twice in one day recently, chatting up a couple people, but my concerns, death-threats, continual harassment by cops, stalkers and family is ignored! Now with what appears to be Arson at another Abandoned House I was trying to fix up and acquire, denied yet again, of a safe, stable place to live!
If Police do nothing, Police Chiefs do nothing, call to FBI, Mayors; one that even attended my mother-n-laws funeral knowing my brother-n-law, but not even acknowledging me; Ms. Thane continuously making numerous threats with staff at City Hall—where does a person turn?
Similar when I was recently attacked a few times at RiverLink Summer Concert series. Free Concerts; I attended 3, not sure if I will again! I sat on the bench that has a small plaque that reads, “In Honor Of Artists Who Survived The McCarthy WitchHunt.”
I had read, “The Bell Jar,” numerous times, loved it. Sylvia Plath an absolute favorite helped me get through a horrible childhood. I recalled the beginning from a favorite novel:
“McCarthyism was a broader political ideology encompassing patriotic right-wing activists and liberal anti-Communists (Schrecker 2004, 1043). It was a political witch-hunt against everyone who did not conform with state-enforced politics, reaching its peak when Ethel and Julius Rosenberg were electrocuted on 19 June 1953 for allegedly giving out information to the Russian government about American nuclear weapon designs.
Plath was in New York undertaking her internship at the Mademoiselle magazine when the execution took place which she commemorated in a fictionalised account in
The Bell Jar: “It was a queer, sultry summer, the summer they electrocuted the Rosenbergs, and I didn’t know what I was doing in New York” (Plath, The Bell Jar 2001, 1). Her emotionally charged journal entry likens the Rosenbergs’ sentence to public executions evoking the Salem witches (Clark 2020, 253):”
https://usso.uk/mccarthyism-and-witch-hunts-sylvia-plaths-perspective/
I struggled to understand what was happening. Mr Tonko was also a favorite to brag about by my ex-husband. The fight he got in as a young man—a felony! wasn’t as the years went by “just a guy fight over a girl,” but something far more sinister. He didn’t “do time,” never did for anything he did, said some were angry he didn’t, some had done time, but that was the thing; he never got in trouble for anything, so it was hard to understand his criminality, let alone all the people that protected, supported, and helped him every time! covering everything thing up all the time.
I miss being at the Abandoned house. Waking up on the park bench is frightening, humiliating, and demoralizing, as this nightmare continues. The lovely homes disappearing here are criminal! Each day there are less and less affordable ones to live in, while the disgusting mall is still here, which should be torn down and replaced by a modern supermarket. No place to eat, live or do business—welcome to hell!
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