Brick House There was only one house on The Platform that wasn’t white: the brown Plasticville house with the red roof and a little chimney that kept falling off. I was easy to see who lived in the house. Since it was bigger than our house, it had to be a Mother, Father and TWO children instead of just one. The brother had a bike that he turned upside down on the front lawn in summer and pretended to fix for the the benefit of passerbys. Truth is, there was nothing wrong with it, so of course it worked after he squirted oil on the chain and tested it out by turning the pedals by hand. He had an Erector set with a real motor that he hooked up to a ferris wheel he built. He was quite proud of himself for that and kept it on the floor of his closet so he could haul it out quickly whenever company came and he was in the mood for praises. His sister made muffins out of poison berries in old aluminum ice trays that she pretended to bake in her milk crate stove out back beneath the willow tree that blew down last year in a storm and smashed the house with the closet where the ferris wheel was kept. A new family moved in and rebuilt from scratch. Now there are wooden geese wearing calico scarves hanging on all the doors and wooden pinwheels in the garden and a charcoal grill by the garage for cooking hot dogs. The boy went off to join the air force and now flies jets for Pan Am. The girl grew up to be a mother but her sons bled to death from some disease they got from their dad.