This is where I grew up. Before my dad built on and built on and built on. We moved in when I was four years old. Four kids, two bedrooms, one bath and five acres to run around on like rugrats. What are rugrats? I guess I really don't know, but I remember being called one fairly often.
Sitting on the front porch is the box where the glass jugs of milk were delivered. Two gallons a week. I remember that shortly after we finally had wall to wall carpet installed in the living room, my brother Mark carried in the glass jugs and accidentally banged them together, busting both wide open soaking the carpet.
Surrounding the front porch, there were cactus plants which taught me early on never to smear your little baby hands all over, I never forgot that lesson and have never planted a cactus. We called the big window in front a picture window in which each pane was a separate piece of glass. I'm assuming the term picture window went by the wayside about the same time as the term milkman.
I once took a flying leap onto the side of the porch and landed squarely on the shin of one leg. That sucker was swollen and bruised for weeks, you didn't rush kids off to the doc back then unless they were bleeding, PROFUSELY.
The bush along the sidewalk was a forsythia. It was ugly except for when a few days in the spring when it bloomed. All along the front was a hedge which had to be trimmed quite often. I remember Mom hacking away at it with the old style, manual hedger. Years later both the hedge and the forsythia were yanked out.
The leaves on the tree on the left side of the picture was Mike's tree. There were two big trees in front and two in the back and for some strange rugrat reason, we kids decided that we each had a tree. Helen and Mike's were in front and Mark and mine were in the back. Mark had the best climbing tree. I could climb it even when I was little. I once climbed so high I could see a big castle on the other side of State Road 37. When I got older, the "castle" had somehow morphed into a farmer's silo. Why would someone turn a perfectly wonderful castle into an ordinary silo? That is not progress, I wonder if they also took away the moat, the princess and the white knight, not that I ever saw them.
On the foundation of the house that is on the right side of the picture, the little white door was where the coal was delivered and dumped into the coal bin in the basement. I still remember my brothers getting up on cold winter mornings and shoveling more coal into the furnace.
God, I'm old.
This is the house where we all held dad's hands while he passed away in 1992. It was the only house he ever owned.
It sits empty now. Do you think the memories are still playing on the side of a wall inside like an old projector when no one is looking?
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