My wife comes from the fabulously wealthy town of Lycippus, Pennsylvania.  I believe that she owns a controlling interest in that town and the surrounding territories.  While I have known Miss Chicka for a number of years, she has never mentioned that she ever served in the American military.  Those of you who have served in the American military know that there is a great premium placed on “policing the area.”  Policing the area merely means that candy wrappers, gum wrappers, and cigarette butts are to be picked up off the ground and disposed of properly.
Last Sunday, April 18, Miss Chicka was standing in our front doorway, staring out the storm door.  She noticed that a candy wrapper was being blown across our yard toward the neighbor’s yard.  True to her military traditions, Miss Chicka bounded out the front door and down the steps to retrieve the candy wrapper.  The prevailing wind at that time was from south to north, which meant that the candy wrapper was being blown from our property on to the property of the neighbor known as Mr. Feldman.
My wife is not known for her visual acuity but on this occasion once she approached the loose candy wrapper in the winds blowing at that time, she also noticed that the Feldman house had a “For Sale” sign on it.  This was a curious piece of work in that the Feldmans bought that house from our great and good friend, Frances Licht, only in September of 2007.  Apparently they intend to unload that property, having lived in it about two and a half years.
The Feldmans have remodeled that house.  While the remodeling was taking place, they moved out to a place in Millburn, New Jersey for one year.  The better part of two years was spent in remodeling the house.
Perhaps I should explain about our relationship with the Feldmans.  When they arrived on the scene, they seemed to be having a party with the in-laws.  I asked Judy if she would take an expensive bottle of champagne to the Feldmans as a welcoming present.  Judy did that and met the family, including the grandparents.  Since that time, there has been no – no or none – communication between the Feldmans and the Carrs or anyone else in this neighborhood as far as I know.  There was no thank you note for the champagne.  The fact that I spent nearly thirty bucks for it testifies to my stupidity.
During the time the Feldmans have lived there, there have only been two contacts with them.  During the remodeling process, which took the better part of two years, the junk from the house was piled in the back yard without using a Dempsey dumpster.  I feared, as did the neighbor to the north, Janet Rubin, that this long-standing pile of trash would accommodate rats.  And so it was that I called Mr. Feldman to express my thoughts on that subject.
The Feldmans had no land telephone, using only the cell phone that Mr. Feldman brought with him from his former residence in Brooklyn, New York.  The conversation with Feldman was rational, and he agreed with all of the points that I had made.  He wound up telling me that before it was done, I would be proud to live next door to his back yard.
I might tell you that we were able to contact Feldman on his cell phone only because Miss Chicka had managed to weasel it out of the contractor, who used it to contact Mr. Feldman to get instructions on the remodeling.
A second conversation with Mr. Feldman took place some time later, when his contractor left a hose turned on and I called him to tell him that the water was going down his basement window.  It turns out that Mr. Feldman was not in residence here, but someplace in Miami, Florida.  He agreed to get somebody over to the house to turn the water off.
On one other occasion, when Miss Chicka and I were outside, Mr. Feldman was playing soccer ball with his two daughters.  Judy went to stand on the corner of their yard to ask him if he like to met her husband.  Mr. Feldman never interrupted his game, and when it became apparent that he had no intention of doing so, Judy left.  So as a result, I have never met the Feldmans during their tenure here on Long Hill Drive.  The Feldmans wished, I guess, to maintain their privacy and I respect that.  However, I wish that they would take care of their back yard to make me proud of it.  During the remodeling process, the Feldmans had a hot tub installed outside of their house in the back yard, which, I must tell you, did not make me feel proud in any shape or form.  I simply wondered what in the hell they were doing with a hot tub located outside their house.
So as you can see, I have no inside information as to where the Feldmans intend to move if they are successful in selling their property.  I have let the Feldmans go their own way and if they wish to have no contact with their neighbors, I suppose that is the way it is going to be.
What intrigued me was the fact that when Miss Chicka looked up from retrieving the candy wrapper, she noticed an entry on the “For Sale” sign that was significant.  As most of you know, “For Sale” signs have spaces for additional information.  In this case, however, the additional information said “I’m gorgeous inside.”  Ellen Konik, who is in charge of selling the house also seems to have written these lines.
It has been by view that a house consists of the inside and the outside.  However, in the Feldman case, they intended only to advertise the inside as being gorgeous.  I must say that after the remodeling had taken place in their home, some of my friends commented that the outside was “bizarre.”  I am not in a position to comment on the exterior of their home, but from what I am told, it is largely a monstrosity.  To think that the house had recently been remodeled!  So I suppose with the outside of the house being a monstrosity, the only saving grace is that the interior should be gorgeous.
I suspect that any prospective customer who would buy the Feldman house would reduce the size of his offer substantially.  After all, the Feldmans themselves say that only the inside is gorgeous.  What about the outside?
The idea that you could have a house in which the inside was described as gorgeous led me to think about other merchants in Millburn who would have a similar situation.  Let us take the mythical Millburn Florist for example.  The mythical Millburn florist might say, “Our flowers are thoroughly wilted and shopworn, but you should buy them because they are gorgeous on the inside.”  Somehow that doesn’t strike me as much of an argument.
Now let us say that we are the owners of a fancy well-to-do Millburn restaurant.  We might say that our offerings are mangy and very expensive but you should buy them because once they are eaten, a gorgeous feeling will overtake your mouth and esophagus.
Then let us say that Paul Ippolito, our local undertaker, should adopt the Feldman principle.  He might advertise that no matter how disheveled you look when the burial ceremony is to take place, once you are in his newly modeled coffin you will feel gorgeous inside.  Again, I am not much taken with that thought.
And, finally, there is the thought that Millburn has, in my estimation, never had a respectable brothel.  About the closest thing we have to a good brothel would be Martini’s Restaurant, which offers speed dating where men and women can sit together for five or ten minutes and see if they wish to go on from there.  The owner of Martini’s must contend that there is no need for a brothel because once you have eaten some of his food, you will feel gorgeous inside and forget your sexual desires.
It may well be that the idea of advertising that gorgeous feelings will flow from your being involved in a transaction in which the exterior means nothing and the interior means everything, but it is doubtful.  I have been around advertising for a long time and I doubt that this will take place.  In any case, I would like to be an onlooker in the bargaining that takes place when a prospective buyer shows up and sees that only the inside is advertised as gorgeous.  All I can tell you is that the world has taken some funny turns here lately, but if this is a profitable one, where only the inside is advertised as gorgeous, I remain to be impressed.
 
E. E. CARR
April 25, 2010
Essay 450
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Kevin’s commentary: Looks like the house never sold. More on that here and here. Of course, those are updates from years in the future. View the sequel to this essay here.
Also, I would like to observe that perhaps Pop attracts mediocre neighbors in the same way that I attract mediocre landlords. If this is true, I am going to just make the assumption that I have cursed genes and let it rest at that.
Oh, and finally I would request a 2013 update on this particular house.