Home Sweet Home

The house we grew up in has been on the market for a while. A few months ago, before leaving California, I looked at the realtor's photos on-line. They were unnerving and tantalizing at the same time. Of course, I have walked/driven/ridden past the house many times over the past 32 years (Mom sold it in 1981). Stopped and marveled at its decrepit state, the same old air conditioner in the window, how huge the trees have gotten, how small the yard seems, the leaves piled ceiling high in the back porch. Wondered who lived there, if anyone lived there.

One time ten years ago, Sissy and I actually walked around the house then entered the woods that lie adjacent to it. Afterwards, Sissy got a migraine. Bad ju ju?

Anyway, as part of the quest I was on while living in Murvul, I decided to ask our realtor if she would be willing to give up a half hour of her time to give us an insider's tour. She agreed. (Sissy and I can't decide if she's a glutton for punishment or if she agrees to work with us so she'll have good stories to tell at her realtors' conferences.)

So one day, after Sissy and I had finished wandering around the Foothills Fall Festival and I'd shown her the plaque that marked where Hale High School used to be and we'd walked the labyrinth I'd discovered in the old Presbyterian cemetery next to St. Andrew's Episcopal Church, we met our realtor at the house. She was a few minutes late, so we had time to get ourselves sufficiently weirded out by walking around the house and yard: the same garage door with the hole cut out for Tom, the cat, and still covered with the same flap of carpet; the same mailbox; Mom's concrete planter; the same storm doors; same porch light fixture. But if we thought these things were weird, just wait until we got inside the house.

First, just let me say, you know that thing about things seeming so huge when you're small? Well, this trip confirmed that for me many times over. I don't know if it was because the trees are now HUGE (and there are trees where there used to be none) but the once vast, wide-open yard now seems miniscule. I actually felt claustrophobic standing in it. And inside everything seemed about ten times smaller than when I was a kid: Daddy's walk-in closet, for example. This is the place where I would climb up his dresser onto the shelf and lie there on the blankets and read. When I saw it, I truly believed the subsequent owners must have shortened the depth. It was SO small I couldn't believe a dresser and Daddy's foot locker would even fit in there. The dining room area, the bathrooms, the bedrooms. Everything seemed so tiny. I felt like Alice in Wonderland.

Coupled with the warped size experience was the time warp we went through upon entering. While it's true that subsequent owners and/or tenants had changed the green shag carpet, painted some rooms, removed a wall heater in a bathroom, added a couple of closets in the "master" bedroom, and knocked a couple of holes in the stucco in order to put in air conditioners, everything else was unchanged. Untouched. 32 years later (although certain features had been the same since it had been built in 1948): bathroom sinks, door knobs, bathroom light fixtures, switch plates, light covers, the hardwood floor in the living room (it obviously had not been waxed or treated since Mom and Dad moved out), the stove.

Above is the medicine cabinet in the main bathroom. I can still see Daddy's tin of Pepsodent tooth powder and his shaving brush and razor sitting on the shelves. You can see that no one has bothered to paint inside.

But all that was a mere drop in the time warp bucket compared to the basement. Time stood still down there.

Mom and Daddy put down this piece of linoleum when I was 7 or 8. It was in the play area they created for me, complete with a blackboard, table and chairs, and bookshelves. I remember that one of the conditions for occupancy was periodically mopping the linoleum.

I was terrified of going down these steps alone. I believed something would reach in between from underneath and grab my legs.

My playroom was in the area just past the steps, between the three columns. The linoleum is under the boards that are lying on their sides.

This is what remains of one of Daddy's packing blankets (he was in the furniture business) that was wrapped around this metal support pole so the car door wouldn't get banged up when we opened it.

There were other relics down there: the pie tin that covered the stove flue hole, the hand made wooden shelves, the drain in the floor where Daddy cleaned hundreds of fish, Mac's "experiment" room (and the location of the freezer that held Mom's frozen birds), a card of very old fuses hanging on the wall. But nothing beat finding my handiwork.

The doorway goes into the experiment room, the bluish part of the wall is where the freezer was. All of the graffiti was done by me. Turning and seeing this stopped me dead in my tracks.

Red Nikoban once held meaning. I remember that much, just not what the meaning was. This is part of a larger body of work that included the name of my elementary school-Sam Houston-and  the initials of my high school-M.H.S.

L.M. My initials.

I mean, really. Why wouldn't someone at some point in time paint over this? Even if it had been some stellar piece of street art I would still think the owners or someone would've gotten rid of it. The fact that it's juvenile scribbling makes it even more baffling.

And yet, someone did paint over the hash marks on the bedroom door that showed our growth. Go figure.