Chapter 7 - 1961 Stanley Zywar's Affinity For Water

Chapter 7 Version 2

1961

People develop an affinity between themselves and some objects either inanimate or animate. These objects have an attachment on their people’s attention sometimes to the point of obsession but more often that attachment is just lurking in the back of their minds. Some people like mountains and others like the seashore. There can be an attraction to cars, trains or planes. Monet’s preoccupation with haystacks changed to water lilies. Brian Wilson had his pet sounds.

Stanley had an affinity for water.

He needed to be close to the water. The large in ground concrete pool was the central focus of the third house Stanley designed for himself. When the Zywar family bought the orchard on the corner of Parsons and East Streets, the property was sub-divided with a landlocked lot in the middle of the property. Lots were sold to family members for $500. The orphaned central lot was planned to house a Zywar family pool. Instead, it was used by Zywar and neighborhood children as a football, baseball, soccer and golf venue before Joe eventually turned it into a garden area. So Stanley built his own pool as the centerpiece of a modern L shaped house that sported a flat roof with a large overhang. The pool was nestled inside the L. The exterior of the house was of beige Tennessee sandstone that Joe turned into a masonry work of art. On the inside, Stanley designed an electrical system that had a control panel in his bedroom that could control every light and electrical device in the entire house. An electrical system that complex was unusual for the mid-1950’s.

Stanley sat in the cheap aluminum folding chair with the woven plastic seat and back. He stared into the water of the pool. “My oldest memory is from when I was two years old” said Stanley. John wasn’t that interested. He wanted to hear about the war. Boys fought wars and girls had babies. Seemed to be a fair exchange.

Stanley continued undeterred “My father bought a house on Pepin Street in the French part of town and had it moved over to the Polish side of town to 10 Lewandowski Avenue.” Moving a house? thought John. But Stanley continued with his crazy talk. “My grandfather went back and forth between Poland and the USA. Many times he did this.” That stretched Stanley’s credibility even further because everyone knows that nobody went back after they came to America. “When I was two years old, my grandfather’s funeral was in the house on Lewandowski Avenue and that is the farthest back I can remember.”

Whether Stanley was a bullshiter or a bullshit artist was a point of discussion among relatives and acquaintances alike. A bullshiter talked knowledgably about things they have no knowledge of. A bullshit artist on the other hand painted what sounded like bullshit into a canvas of storytelling making it into an artistic experience. Sometimes the resulting bullshit painting was a colorful but somewhat hazy Monet or it could be a precise Rembrandt with details rivaling a photograph. Occasionally the bullshit painting is minimalist but it usually contains enough details to make a point. Maybe Stanley was painting on a bullshit artist canvas.

The seemingly crazy talk continued, “Do you know where my grandfather first came to America?” Stanley asked John rhetorically. “Charleston, South Carolina.”

“What was he doing in Charleston, South Carolina?” asked John suspiciously.

“He was running guns into the Confederacy” said Stanley.