I was several days old when my parents brought me home to this house. That was in 1947. In late summer of 2005, I handed the keys to the new owners. I walked away and never went back to the house, never spoke with the new family and never asked to "take a look around". My wife, brother, son and I cleaned the house to reveal the bare floor. I tossed things out of the attic window that had never moved an inch in the all the years I lived there. The whole experience of parting with the detritus of my childhood was heartbreaking. Indeed, I've never been quite the same since. Places I've lived in since then were mere dwellings and not a treasure chest full of bittersweet candies.
We were a family of six, parents and four boys. I was the youngest so I got blamed for everything and spent my early teenage years with tired parents...tired from raising three older boys. There was no energy left for me. My mother passed away in 1992 and was quickly followed by my two older brothers. Then my father went from being a golfer and driving the car until three months before he too met death.
What do I remember about the house? In a word, everything. Can I relate it all to you? Not in 1,000 pages of a website and ten years of searching my brain for the smallest things. The house seemed to go on and on, room after room, down one hallway and up another. An attic that was to be avoided at all costs when the sun went down. A cellar door that spoke to me, saying: "Don't go down there, Pat. It's not a place for a child. What if the lights went out while you were down there? How loud could you scream? Where would you run?"
Coal. Black nuggets of potential heat was piled high in the cellar corner. I watched the loads get delivered and then slowly disappear. Later, it was heating oil. It was expensive so my father kept the thermostat down. I remember scratching ice off the inside of my bedroom window on cold mornings in January.
And, then there was the "room with four doors". This was and perhaps still is a mystery place that my children and nieces and nephews pondered over. It was a confluence of a hallway door, a closet door, bedroom door and a bathroom door. Sometimes my father would paint them all the same color. I would take my six-year old daughter into the cubicle. Blindfold her, turn off the light and spin her around one way and then the other until she was totally disoriented. I would turn on the light and ask her to chose only one door that would get us out of there. She begged to do it again and again and again.
It was a "marked house". I found out about this in the mid 1950's. There would be a knock on the back screen door. I would answer. A strange man would ask if my mother was home. Sure, I said. She'd come to the door. Ma'am, if you please, I'll rake leaves or stack some wood for a sandwich and a glass of water. She'd show him the rake and he'd clean that corner of the yard. When he came back to the door, there would be a ham and cheese sandwich and a glass of milk. Thank you, Ma'am. God bless you. I stood by the apple tree and watched the whole scene. I can say truthfully that this man was no threat to my mom or me. He simply walked back across the street and back to the box car of the train that had been sitting on the tracks. This happened more than once. My mom told me that the house was "marked" by the hobos as a safe place to get a sandwich in exchange for a little raking. I looked over the house carefully looking for the "mark". I never found one. I now know there never was one. It was an unwritten understanding that was passed orally from drifter to drifter...about the kind lady in the house on the curve of the street.
There was a river at the end of our yard. I would sit for hours on the bank and watch the water flow by. These memories are like the drops of water...once they passed me, I would never see them again...or would I?
We were a family of six, parents and four boys. I was the youngest so I got blamed for everything and spent my early teenage years with tired parents...tired from raising three older boys. There was no energy left for me. My mother passed away in 1992 and was quickly followed by my two older brothers. Then my father went from being a golfer and driving the car until three months before he too met death.
What do I remember about the house? In a word, everything. Can I relate it all to you? Not in 1,000 pages of a website and ten years of searching my brain for the smallest things. The house seemed to go on and on, room after room, down one hallway and up another. An attic that was to be avoided at all costs when the sun went down. A cellar door that spoke to me, saying: "Don't go down there, Pat. It's not a place for a child. What if the lights went out while you were down there? How loud could you scream? Where would you run?"
Coal. Black nuggets of potential heat was piled high in the cellar corner. I watched the loads get delivered and then slowly disappear. Later, it was heating oil. It was expensive so my father kept the thermostat down. I remember scratching ice off the inside of my bedroom window on cold mornings in January.
And, then there was the "room with four doors". This was and perhaps still is a mystery place that my children and nieces and nephews pondered over. It was a confluence of a hallway door, a closet door, bedroom door and a bathroom door. Sometimes my father would paint them all the same color. I would take my six-year old daughter into the cubicle. Blindfold her, turn off the light and spin her around one way and then the other until she was totally disoriented. I would turn on the light and ask her to chose only one door that would get us out of there. She begged to do it again and again and again.
It was a "marked house". I found out about this in the mid 1950's. There would be a knock on the back screen door. I would answer. A strange man would ask if my mother was home. Sure, I said. She'd come to the door. Ma'am, if you please, I'll rake leaves or stack some wood for a sandwich and a glass of water. She'd show him the rake and he'd clean that corner of the yard. When he came back to the door, there would be a ham and cheese sandwich and a glass of milk. Thank you, Ma'am. God bless you. I stood by the apple tree and watched the whole scene. I can say truthfully that this man was no threat to my mom or me. He simply walked back across the street and back to the box car of the train that had been sitting on the tracks. This happened more than once. My mom told me that the house was "marked" by the hobos as a safe place to get a sandwich in exchange for a little raking. I looked over the house carefully looking for the "mark". I never found one. I now know there never was one. It was an unwritten understanding that was passed orally from drifter to drifter...about the kind lady in the house on the curve of the street.
There was a river at the end of our yard. I would sit for hours on the bank and watch the water flow by. These memories are like the drops of water...once they passed me, I would never see them again...or would I?