[A ‘new’ vintage postcard of our apartment building. Out apartment is shown by the black arrow. Source: Public Domain.]

Nothing changes. Everything looks the same, feels the same, even smells the same. You realize what’s changed is you.

~~F. Scott Fitzgerald

I slid out of our four-poster and onto the creaky wooden floor. It’s the third morning for Mariam and me in our new apartment. I make my way to the refrigerator in the kitchen intent on adding more ice to my water bottle. Compared to the apartment we recently vacated in New York City, this space is cavernous, spacious, echo y. Yes, it echos so that my wife can’t really call out anything to me if I’m across the room.

We’re considering Walkies-Talkies.

Echos.

I have a history with this apartment building. A personal history, one that is rife with sadness, loneliness, abandonment and tears.

But first, a little background about our new home: It was built in 1906 (according to local legends, the foundation was laid by chain gang prisoners) as a schoolhouse. As you can see from the image above, it’s not a small one-room school at all. It functioned as a school until sometime in the 1960s (I’m unsure of the exact dates). Then for several decades it was a county office building. In 2016 – 2019, it was converted to luxury apartments. The Estates at 231 Main.

Echos.

We’re settling in nicely, thank you. The massive pile of packing paper, and over 100 boxes (many are filled with books), is getting smaller each day. There are amenities that we did not enjoy in our old apartment, like free bike storage and a wine cellar.

The story I really want to tell you, however, has little to do with the high ceilings and large windows and empty boxes. It’s the ghosts I’m concerned with.

Owego has a large number of ghost stories associated with many of the old buildings. And, the building I’m sitting in as I write this post is no exception. Do the spirits of the chain gang prisoners still walk these halls? Is all the floorboard creaking from my own feet? What’s with that chilly draft I felt three hours ago?

These are things I will learn about, I’m sure, in the coming months and years as we make this our home.

But I am waiting to hear an echo. In the quiet space of the large living room, I stand and listen and wait to hear an echo. It may not pass easily through the industrial walls and floors, but it’s likely drifting about in the dark corners of the hallways…especially in the basement level. Three floors below where I’m sitting and typing.

[A recent photo taken by the author. The red arrow points to some shrubbery and a few trees. Look closely. See the windows just visible to the right of the door? Photo is mine.]

Those three windows, my kind readers, is where I went to Kindergarten. I would have been five years old. The year is likely 1952. I remember it all in exacting detail. My mother walked me to that door one September morning. It was chilly with mist rising from the Susquehanna. She took me to meet the teacher. I looked into the room. Could there really have been over 20 pupils, many of whom were my friends? I looked at the teachers kind face and then at my mother’s dark hair and red lipstick.

I began sobbing. I wailed, I cried, I called out to be taken back home. I wanted no part of this thing called Kindergarten. I wanted to go home.

The teacher told my mom to wait outside in the hallway. I saw her pacing back and forth through the door’s window. How could she abandon me? Clearly, she didn’t love me. I was probably too much trouble for anyone.

I cried louder. Maybe my mom would have second thoughts and take me home. I’d be good. Maybe we could try this school thing in a week or two. When I was more ready.

I made it through the first day but I don’t have any memory of how I pulled it off.

All I can say now is that my cries are still in the air, in the walls, the floorboards. They must be. Where else can they go? The molecules of air that vibrated with my screams never really stop vibrating. They just diminish. But never go away altogether.

Maybe that’s why I haven’t heard my sobs. I just have aged enough and my middle ear, having aged along with the rest of me, just can’t detect my vociferous wailing. I just have to be quieter, less distracted.

Then perhaps I’ll hear myself in this old building. It harbors spirits. Mine included.