Ghost Houses

On the eve of Halloween it seems appropriate to talk about the various houses I have lived in that now no longer exist except in my mind. Ghosts, if you will.

Of course, my childhood home still stands...for now. My feeling is it was waiting for a visit from me before finally deciding to let go and die. I bet that before the end of the year, it will be razed.

When I first moved away from home, I lived in an apartment in an historic house in the Ft. Sanders neighborhood in Knoxville. While living there, a fire happened at the house across the street. A friend escaped. One person died. I remember hosting escapees while the firemen worked to put out the fire.

Ft. Sanders may be an historic area but that hasn't saved the many beautiful Victorians from being unceremoniously torn down by the university and the hospital to make way for parking lots and ugly apartment complexes. Such was the fate of my first apartment. "Jamaica Flats" no longer exists.

As far as I know, every place I lived in New York still exists.

However, the first place I lived in California disappeared in spectacular fashion: in the Berkeley-Oakland Firestorm of 1991. Up in smoke. Gone in a blaze of glory. Nothing left but the chimney and a pile of ashes outlining Beth's big oak desk.

Then there is The Farm. Moved. Left in a field on a hill. Then...gone. It may still exist somewhere but I don't know where so, for all intents and purposes, it's gone, too.

I ask you, is this normal? Have you lost a former abode to a fire, a storm, a bulldozer? If so, have you lost more than one?

I suppose, given how much I have moved, that the odds are in favor of more than one place disappearing but it is still a bit unsettling.