Muffy married Tony when they still lived in Chicago. In the nineteen-thirties, Muffy and Tony Golden moved to a stucco house, set between a stream and several oak covered hills. By car, this house can only be reached by Marion Road, a single lane, which, with no warning, dies there.

When I was a child, the vestige of wagon wheel tracks could be seen on the floor of the forest, veering off from the road just before it comes to its surprising end. These shallow impressions pivoted north from the road and lead to the south bank of the West Branch of the Du Page River.

European settlers had made the wagon tracks. They followed the trail created earlier by Indians, who had lived and worked there until forced out by these Europeans. Curving around the base of a hill defining the western edge of my parents’ property, these slight depressions disappeared during the years I lived there.

As a child, I doubted the stories about Indians, in spite of arrowheads reportedly found by friends. Forty years after I left home, significant Indian mounds were discovered a mile upstream.

The Goldens’ house was a hundred yards from the ruins of a mushroom factory, and must have been built for the mushroom farmer. According to the myths with which I grew up, an explosion destroyed the facility, leaving only an assortment of cement walls in varying degrees of rectitude.

In the early‘40’s, my parents bought land adjacent to the Goldens. My father designed a Mid-Century Modern house ten years before the middle of the century. It was a quarter mile up the hill from Muffy and Tony. As a child, it seemed to me that the Goldens and their white stucco house, like the woods and the hills, must always have been there. While I realized our house was new, it, too, had always been there, for me. I was born a few years after the house had been built.

Until I left for college at eighteen years of age, I lived in this Mid-West version of “Green Mansions,” an enchanted forest where, in every direction, trees blotted out a clear vision of the sky.

When old enough to feel that I could explore the woods on my own, my mother gave me a police whistle. If I were caught in river mud or pinned beneath a log, it would bring me rescue, in theory. In fact, I doubt anyone would have heard my whistle, but it gave my mother permission to let me wander. Whether climbing trees or building dams and forts, I was happiest when I could spend my time in this environment, full of history one could touch and well suited to serious play.

Downstream, I found several man-made depressions in the ground, adjacent to the riverbank. I inquired and was told that these were the remains of a limekiln. It never made sense to me. I didn’t know what function a limekiln performed and didn’t know why one would be there, in such an isolated spot. Recently, I read, in a history of the area, that a merchant in the nearest town upstream, Winfield, had discovered limestone in his lumberyard. He built the kiln to produce lime for plaster, which he then sold to builders.

The Goldens had no children but loved animals. Muffy wanted to breed dogs as a business, but, in Chicago, it wouldn’t have been possible. A rural spot was needed. How they found it, I have no idea, but Muffy and Tony bought the only house on Marion Road, that one-lane gravel path that came to rest in the lap of their home, just after passing factory remnants. I wasn’t born when Muffy began breeding dogs. By the time I was six, she was no longer in the business. I have only a faint memory of the kennels in the barn. The dogs being bred were German Shepherds and Doberman Pincers. One of each was kept as a pet for many years after the breeding business was over. Until I turned seven, both dogs were considerably larger than I and, even then, it may have been a draw. In spite of their measurements, only the Doberman truly intimidated me. The Shepherd didn’t growl, snap, or place its teeth around my skinny arm.

Muffy and Tony loved horse racing, and went to the racetrack regularly. When we were old enough to go with them on our own, they took first my sister Susan, then, later, me, to the racetrack. Even though I was under age by a decade, I was somehow able to place two-dollar bets at the windows.

Muffy and Tony bought a horse, then another, then two more until they had four. The horses were neither ridden often nor ever raced. They were loved for themselves, not for what they could do for Muffy and Tony. The four horses roamed amidst the cement walls, weaving a post apocalyptic spell over the barnyard. The barn itself was built using some still standing walls as footings. The horses living longest were Lucky and Silver. I remember them well. Trigger is only a vague memory. I don’t recall the fourth at all.

In addition to the four horses and the dogs, Goldens kept enough other animals to fill a small zoological park. Most surprising was their monkey. There were many cats. There was a fox as well as a skunk. There were goats that wandered about freely, in fair weather. In foul, they sheltered in the carcass of what would have been a four-door sedan, if it still had had any. From the make and model, I can tell you that the rear two would have been suicide doors.

A talkative parrot stayed mainly in the house. Most of the other animals were free to come and go, in and out of the house, to the barn, anywhere on the property, which lacked any visible boundaries. Every animal had a colorful name and Muffy thought I needed one too. As if John David Himmelfarb lacked color.

I was a short child with a long name. Muffy renamed me “J. Bolivar Hambone,” six syllables that sounded to both of us a bit like “John David Himmelfarb.” I relished my association with the South American liberator.

On the surface, my parents had little in common with the Goldens, but I sensed that they loved one another. Most often, their interactions were informal and unplanned, but, once in a great while, the Goldens came for a meal. My mother was not only a great cook but knew how to present a meal in a visually memorable way. Muffy could not put on a dinner party, or even have someone over for lunch. She couldn’t keep house, by common standards, and my parents were not offended by the lack of reciprocity. It was obvious that dining at the Goldens’ would have been amazing, but not in a good way, though the animals that came into her house to eat had no complaints.

By the time I have much memory of her, Muffy was morbidly obese most of the time. She was very affectionate and her sense of humor allowed her to enjoy a good laugh. If she happened to see me when I came down the hill to visit the animals, she would come out to tend them with me.

Even when I was a child, it was hard to remember all the animals’ names. At one time, I knew the names of the skunk, the parrot, the goats, the Doberman Pincer, the German Shepherd, the four horses, and maybe a goat or two.

Those animals knew me by sound and smell, but I doubt they knew any of my names. They were close to Muffy and no one else, unless it was to Tony. While these animals and I were not close friends, we were familiars. Neighbors. News of a death amongst them was, while affecting, not a deep personal loss for me.

I often dug graves for birds and other animals that died around our house. I was concerned, even saddened, by their deaths and sought respectful ways to bury them, but I had not known them and their deaths were no more a personal loss than those of one of Muffy’s animals.

The monkey escaped from the “animal farm” with some regularity. In the summer, he would make his way, via closely-knit tree branches, to our driveway and then to our carport. A flagstone pier, supporting one side of the porch, extended beyond, creating a garden wall, where the rough stones were climbed by Clematis. My mother lovednClematis and worked very hard to nurture it there, under the heavy oak canopy. She was infuriated when the monkey would devour the blossoms.

A nearby college was our family’s resource for baby sitters and yard workers. The college, having a religious affiliation, taught many young people who had been raised abroad by missionary parents. These students were often out of touch with American culture.

Our favorite college kid, Paul, working near the flagstone pier one morning, was startled by a monkey visit. He was certain this species lived only in Africa. Confused and alarmed, he called out to us! Later, eating our lunch together, we laughed about his encounter and heard about the monkeys in his life when he was growing up in Africa. My mother enjoyed the stories as much as the rest of our family did, but it didn’t lessen her anger. She would have been more than happy to shoot the lawless beast and use him to fertilize the Clematis.

As the Goldens grew older, increasing numbers of their menagerie died and were not replaced, their names disappearing from memory, much as those who had borne them did from the sheltering woods they had inhabited.

As the size of the animal collection dwindled, Muffy gained weight. In a seemingly endless cycle, Muffy gained enormous mounds of flesh, then lost them. I often heard about different techniques she employed to effect the losses. Spending a good deal of time watching television, she saw ads for myriad diets and pills. I’m sure she gave each one a try.

One day, driving her powerful black Lincoln, she sped up the hill past our house. Seeing me, she hit the brakes. I must have been twelve. She was wearing a muumuu, an “a la mode” dress of the 1950’s, often worn as a housecoat. For Muffy, it wasn’t a matter of being stylish but, instead, of wearing something comfortable around the house and barn.

Muffy sat low on the bench of her Lincoln, behind a black steering wheel as big as a boat’s. The fulsome Lincoln easily accommodated Muffy. I stood on the gravel, looking down at her through the window, which had already been open. Muffy was particularly cheerful. It was summer, which explains why I was home in the day. It explains the open window, the only A/C available in a car, at that time. It also explains why she had nothing else on. It was very warm. If I had seen another woman dressed so lightly, it might have seemed sexy, in spite of our age difference, but Muffy was just Muffy.

I must have remarked on her loss of weight. She looked svelt compared to the average Muffy I knew, though she was still quite large.

Other than her naming me J.Bolivar Hambone, I remember nothing else she ever said to me as clearly as her tale of recent weight loss. For the past three months, she had allowed herself only two foods, her two favorites: root beer and ice cream. Neither of these could be thought of as low calorie items. Diet soda wasn’t on the market yet. Ice cream made from skim milk and artificial sweeteners wasn’t either. No, Muffy was eating as much as she could of the real deal ice cream and root beer, a combination known regionally as a Black Cow. “You know, Bolivar, you can only eat so much of any one thing, no matter how much you like eating.”

I saw less and less of the Goldens as I became preoccupied with high school and then left for college. When I was home from college one summer, Tony, an adjuster for produce insured while in transit by rail, took me to lunch near his office. We dined in the back room at “Yes Sir, Senator,” a Bridgeport restaurant at 31st and Halsted. This was not far from my parents’ city studio, where I was allowed to work the summer after my junior year. Having an adult take me to lunch on my own was wonderful in itself, but I also appreciated getting to know something about Tony’s life in the city.

His valuations required safely balancing the interests of farmers shipping the produce, rail companies carrying it, and the criminal enterprise controlling anything to do with shipping and many other enterprises. Sometime after Tony died, “Yes Sir” caught fire and burned to the ground, in spite of its proximity to a fire station. This single lunch left me with something substantial by which to remember Tony. It gave me a context for him beyond that of “my neighbor who loves Muffy, the woods, horseracing, and all those animals!” Is that why he took me to lunch? A childless man, who no doubt loved me as much as did Muffy, hoping to be remembered?

By this time, there weren’t many animals left to visit at the Goldens, even if I’d had the time. My life was reorienting away from my childhood haunts. Tony died while I was away. It seemed sudden to me, but perhaps I’d just been unaware of his decline. His lifestyle included the cigarettes and cocktails typical of the business and social scenes of the day, and that meat and potatoes, whiskey and cigarettes lifestyle may have cut his life short.

I was working in my first studio in Chicago, when my mother called to tell me that Muffy had been hospitalized.

I had grown up sheltered from illness and death. As a child, I was never taken to wakes and funerals. I developed an avoidance response to visiting the dying.

I hated to have my new, semi-independent urban experience interrupted by reminders of my earlier life, or of responsibilities that evolved from it. My mother was quite firm in telling me that it was very important for me to visit Muffy at the hospital in Winfield. In short, I felt I had no choice.

In her hospital bed, she looked as small as the time I’d seen her on the hill, ensconced in her Lincoln, in the midst of her root beer and ice cream diet. This time, she was neither cheerful nor hopeful. She was aware that she would not outlive her hospital stay. She had little energy or strength, but was very pleased to have Bolivar come to her bedside. I had no idea then how to be of comfort. I might not now. I could have reminisced, or asked questions about her life, but I was too scared and only thought about how to carry out my duty to visit and then leave. Muffy’s gift to me at that moment was to let me know, somehow, that my coming there meant a great deal to her. I hope my visit let her know that I would long remember her.

November 2020