Two nights before Xmess, 1935, my alcoholic, Irish-Catholic, yankee Grandaddy was walking home from his bootlegger, in the middle of the road, and was run over and killed by a produce truck being driven by a sober driver.
His sister, a saint of a woman, traveled all day by train from Emporia for his funeral. She had never met my Granny, and had to share a bed with her. The following day she took Granny by the hand to the insurance agents office. Her brother had died one day past the grace period for his monthly payment, but she had all the right words. Metropolitan Life paid my Granny double indemnity, since it was an accident. She received two thousand dollars.
Granny bought a car, which she could not drive, and it is unclear what became of it. She also bought a lot and put a down payment on a house. She was the first woman in the history of her family to own her own home. She splurged by having electricity, but saved a bit by not having indoor plumbing, only a spiggot in the front yard. For the next ten years she and her daughter took turns, buying the groceries and making the twice monthly payments of $12.50. It would take their entire paycheck from the mill.
In 1945, my uncle returned from the war in Europe, he had a 90 day leave before he was to ship out to the Pacific, that long hot, mixed up summer the war was half over and the bomb was not on their horizon. He borrowed a steer from my fathers father and terraced the front yard, plumbed the house, dug out a basement and poured a retrofitted foundation thru holes cut in the floor, one wheelbarrel load of concrete at a time. He hoped his efforts would lead to forgiveness from his mother, for striking a match in their neighbors barn when he was 4 years old, which lead to their fleeing Burlington, North Carolina, in the middle of the night and my Aunt being born in the back room of a boarding house. The jury is still out on his suscess.
When I was a kid the house was a crazy place fill with seven TVs, two of which worked, a picture of Jesus with heartburn, dusty knickknacks, a platform rocker with cracking patent leather upholdstry painted with yellow house paint. Patterns of conk shells on worn linoleum, an oil circulator in the middle of the living room the only source of heat, coconut sprinkled marshmellow pies. Decorative Xmess candles, melted and impregnated with dust. I learned how to tie knots there. I watched Yellow Submarine on her color TV once she got cable. I was standing on the front steps, leading up to the road, "when I was what, 9 years old" and her neighbor called to tell her George Wallace had been shot.
It was built out of green pine lumber my mother said, never any great prize to anyone but Granny. It was her pride and joy. She lived there from the fall of 1936 to the fall of 1979, when she started living part time with her children. The push was on to get her to sell, she was too old to live alone anymore. She was pursuaded of this one bitter afternoon in 1980 and tore out of the place on ruined knees as fast as she could, not looking back. I was what, 16, awkward kid, out of place, knowing the stress she was under could make the anurism near her heart rupture and then what would we do?
At thanksgiving, 1989, Granny had been buried for a year, and her old house sat empty. I took my sister, visiting from out of town, over there. I knew the guy who know owned it, he would not mind it we looked around. We found an open door and went in. So much had changed, so much had been forgotten. I stood where the sink would go and looked out the window and was washed by the realization I could own this, I could make this my home. I would probably not get another chance to own something of the ancestors. I went home and called the guy. On 1 February 1990, I became a home owner.
That seems so long ago now. The house has become full of all my stuff now, which includes some of Granny's, which now includes 1/3 of my sisters, I could never move, I would have to just leave it all behind and start over. I replaced the roof, the windows, the wiring, the plumbing. I share my home with a black snake that lives in the walls and ocassionally eats the Starling babies that hatch in the eves. One year I had a family of Possums living in the attic. I get the ocassional batt in the house. My dog is buried in the back year, with generations of her feline friends.
I gave up trying to have flowers a few years ago and decided it was cheaper to appreciate the deer that devoured them. Currently I live in the territory of a set of twins I have watched grow up. I don't know what happened to their Mamma, but I can make the clicking noise she used to make to call them, and they look at me like "who are you?"
I heat the house with propane wall heaters, I cool it with box fans in the window. it only gets about 3 hours of direct sun a day, I am blessed with many trees.
I am probably the last person who will ever live in this house. It is functionally obsolete, people these days want McMansions, people don't want to put up with things like crickets. So I will enjoy it, me and my house, barreling toward our own day of parting, and in the meanwhile, I need to stop at the hardwear store today and get some weed eater line.
