Our House

 

by Pa Rock

Home Occupier

I live in an old, but very well built house.   It was constructed in the late 1950's by a professional carpenter who made it for himself and his young family, a wife and four sons.  They lived here for many years before the mother, by then a widow, sold out and moved to town.  She sold to an old man and his grown son who lived here for several years, and then that old man sold out to me almost ten years ago, another old man who now lives in the house with his adult son.

I guess the house is developing a "type."

The house is small, about 1,800 square feet, with two small bedrooms and two small baths, large living room, kitchen, utility room, finished basement, covered front porch, and a comfortable deck off of the back porch.   Back when it was built it was even smaller, by about a third, yet somehow the structure managed to accommodate two adults and four healthy boys!  There are several outbuildings, including two 12-by-24-feet metal buildings that I purchased new and had moved to the property.  The old asphalt shingle roof never had a leak, but a couple of years I had the house and two outbuildings covered with metal roofs just to insure that leaks never had an invitation to develop and plague my happy existence.

Many days I see deer from the front room window as well as from the back deck.   Raccoons, possums, armadillos, even the odd skunk visit the property on occasion, and several groundhogs have permanent burrows beneath the property.  (The carpenter's wife, an original resident of the house, even saw a black bear on the property one time.)   The house sits on ten very green acres with peaceful views in all directions.  There are many trees on the property, including several massive pines that were planted as saplings by the grandfather of the boys who grew up here.

One of the boys who was raised here now lives across the street in a house that he and his wife have occupied for nearly forty years.  He's a nice guy, but he still works full-time so we have not socialized much over the years.  Having one of the original residents so close has always put a certain amount of pressure on me to keep the place looking nice.  Recently, however, I have begun slowing down on the yard work.  When I mow, it looks like a park, but now the park is developing a nice ragged fringe.     Maybe that is why my neighbor's interest in his old home place seems to be suddenly rekindled - or perhaps his interests are changing as he, too, approaches retirement.

What used to be two or three brief conversations a year with the neighbor are now becoming almost daily occurrences.   Anytime the neighbor sees me out in the yard, he strolls over to exchange a few pleasantries.  He seems to be home more and is definitely outside working in his yard more than before.  This past week he even spent several hours cleaning off the county roadway across the street from my yard, an act which gives me a much better view of the deer on that side of the road.

And when the neighbor comes over he quickly becomes immersed in nostalgia.  He likes to stroll the property and show me where the bases were located when he and his brothers played baseball, and tell other stories about various features of the property as he re-lives his bucolic boyhood.  The other day he led me to the backyard where he then made himself at home on the deck.  While he and I and Rosie sat chatting and enjoying the afternoon quiet, he began talking of how his father was too busy building homes for other people to take care of things at home.

He said, "You know, Mom and I built this deck.  We had always talked about how nice it would be to have one, but Dad was busy building other people's houses."  Then apparently one day when the couple was getting on in years and the father was coming into his final illness, the son and his mother decided just to roll up their sleeves and build the deck themselves.  He said that as they worked, his father would occasionally step out on the back porch and offer advice, but my neighbor and his mom did the actual work.  They began the project early one morning and were sitting on their new deck that evening.  I have kept the old deck well treated, and it is still one of the nicer features of the home - and very solid.

I began this piece with the intent of describing "my house," but as the tale poured through my fingers and onto the keyboard, I began to realize that this house, and all houses, embody emotions, memories, and histories of all who have passed through their doors, slept under their roofs, and relaxed and told tales on their decks.  The old house is not "my house," it's "our house."

Several people have had the privilege and responsibility of caring for the old house where I currently hang my clothes, and, over the years, it has cared for all of us.

I'm thinking that I probably need to go mow.