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The House on Grand Street
This is the house where it all began for me, Pamela. It's the house where my mother Alice was born, and the house she grew up in. It's the house of my earliest memories, as my mother and I lived here with my grandparents while my father was stationed in the South Pacific during World War II.
But I recently found out that things actually began for the Burlingtons in Montvale in another house that was just up the hill. This was where Harry and Ella livedwhen they first moved to Montvale from Jersey City. By the time my mother came along in 1920, they had moved to the house on Grand Avenue.
I was in love with this house. Upstairs I was in love with the sound of the cuckoo clock and the drip-drip-drip of rain on the drainpipe outside the window of my bedroom. Downstairs I was in love with Mrs. Terry, the housekeeper. I was in love with playing "spider" fingers with her in the kitchen and with walking to the village with her to buy Pine Brothers soft honey cough drops. I was in love with those two lions on the front porch. And most of all I was in love my Grandpa Burlington, who fed me honey on a green glass plate with a tiny gold spoon.