our house
Childhood memories can be very sharp and vivid don't you think? The house I grew up in was built in the 30's. It was the same house my dad grew up in. An old pier and beam house with a crawl space underneath to allow access to the pipes and other maintenance that might need to be done. We never had to worry too much about that. What we did have to worry about was the varmints that would occasionally wander in or get chased in by the cat. Mr skunk was a very unwelcome guest that let us know he was there. When your driving you know he's there long before you see the dead skunk on that back road, your nose lets you know. You might tell me you know what I'm talking about but unless you've had the crawl-space under your house sprayed or been staring down the barrel of the gun so to speak, you don't have any idea what a skunk smells like. Seriously. The smell is almost alive itself and it coats the inside of your mouth, nose, and throat like grease and you swear you can taste it too. It's bad bad bad juju and it takes weeks to go away.

I remember walking the grounds of the "estate" which consisted of about three and half acres, more than anyone around us with only the regular backyard fences had. We hosted a lot of football and baseball games at my house. In the summer my dad let the man who lived across from us till up the land and grow corn there which was pretty neat to run through as a kid. We would play with our army soldiers and dig big trenches and forts out of the dirt, pretending dirt clods were mortar rounds pounding the enemy to dust.

There was a peach tree, a fig tree, and two or three plumb trees. We ate the ones that the worms hadn't gotten to yet and had plumb wars with the ones that they had. I can remember getting into a lot trouble mom that day, White t-shirt and plumb juice are not good friends. At the fence line there were black berries bushes that we would pick for mom to make jelly and growing up the side of the house honey suckle bushes would sweeten the breeze through the open window in the spring. The front yard had four giant crepe myrtle trees and more honey suckle.

Before I was born there were a lot more buildings around the main house. There were two long ones on either side that were torn down leaving only the barest of the foundation showing. In the backyard we had a storm cellar. It was built below ground, the roof being the only thing jutting about 4 feet into the air. We used to sneak down the steps into the cramped little room and pretend we were in a submarine or steal my dads playboys and read them in secret. It had a deep mildewy smell that to this day if I smell it, it reminds me of playboy magazines. The giant tree that towered over it served as a base for our pathetic tree-house. It was only a floor with a little green shag carpet laid on top. We wouldn't have even had that if it hadn't been for my mom getting up there and putting that in when we were at school one day ( moms are great ) On the south side of the house we had an old dilapidated well that Pop was ALWAYS afraid we going to end up at the bottom of someday. An old washhouse directly behind that was what we used for storage and our bicycles.

I can remember summers sleeping with the fans in the windows, making tents out of the sheets by tucking them in on bottom and one side and letting the fan billow the sheet up. At first we didn't have any air conditioners. Instead we had a big water cooler outside the living room. If you don't know what that is I'll describe it to you. It's a big metal box about 3 feet by 3 feet by 3 feet hanging on the outside of the house with straw packed in the three walls that we had to spray with water from the hose outside and wet down. In the middle is a giant hamster wheel that sucked in the air from outside and across the water into the house to cool it off. It worked pretty good actually. The kitchen was always warm in the winter from the gas stove we had. We would hang our gloves on the oven door after playing in the rare Texas snow. It used to snow in Texas but not so much now, just ice storms. We had snow, but not like up north. We would make hairy snowmen because there wasn't much more than a half inch or so that was mixed with the grass underneath.

The inside of the house was built in a circle and every room opened up into the room next to it so you really could run around the house chasing the cat. It was funny to make her slip and skid around the linoleum kitchen floor as she tried to negotiate the turn.

I walked every inch of the house, climbed every tree, cut every blade of grass and attacked every red ant pile with a vengeance. I knew everything about that house. Eventually it was time to move on and out; mom was threatening me with the army, and I moved out with my best friend that I met when we were six. Not long after, my parents split up and divorced. Mom moved to her own place and Pop and my brother lived alone for a bit. Then after my grandpa died, dad moved into his house and my brother came to live with me. The house was sold and neglected. No one lived there after us.

I drove by the other day to see it how it was. It was gone. Condemned by the city unfit for man or beast it was torn down.

I wished I had saved some things from that house. I regret not pulling the door frame in the kitchen that my mom marked our heights on as my brother and I grew up. There was even one for buckwheat the cat. The only things left now are the cellar in the backyard and the washhouse. All the trees and bushes have reclaimed the land.

I parked in the neighborhood that I no longer recognized, All my friends had moved away. I barely knew my grandma before she died. I was very young. She planted a rose bush in the backyard that was still there. I took a small rock from the flower garden. Besides my memories it's my only souvenir.

This diary is lame. - Wednesday, Feb. 25, 2009
woah - Thursday, Feb. 05, 2009
operation kindness - Thursday, Apr. 20, 2006
more belligerent bees on dogs - Monday, Feb. 20, 2006
teste-moanial - Thursday, Feb. 16, 2006




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