Memories indeed

There have been a couple of the thirty-day-challenge entries that I had problems with, subjects that just didn't immediately speak to me.  I'd ponder off and on for hours and finally, by stretching my imagination, I'd come up with something, whether from the past or the present.  

Today's topic presented me with a unique problem: at the age of sixty-seven, memories are abundant.  My problem was choosing one out of thousands; thank goodness Grandma Stevens came to mind.  

I have lots of pictures of Grandma, but the first one that came up in a search on my computer was one of her standing by her house, near the door we walked through when we visited her.  I looked no further.  

Her house was the center of many holiday activities, a place that never seemed to change.  A kid could count on it being the same year after year.  In my mind I can still walk through that house: I can see Grandma rolling out noodles at the kitchen cabinet; or sitting in her rocking chair in the living room crocheting as she listened to "One Man's Family" on the radio; or writing letters to friends on a Sunday afternoon.  I can see her upstairs at the quilt frame making beautiful quilts, one stitch at a time. 

It wasn't a big house, so when all the uncles, aunts, and cousins gathered, it was jam-packed, but somehow there was enough room for everybody.  

Five children were born and raised there.  In my mother's story (on the sidebar with her picture), my mom mentions a preacher who came and stayed with them.  He was a carpenter, so he helped my grandfather add the upstairs to the house.  They would work on the house all day, then go to church each night and the preacher would preach.    

Because my parents moved often, there was something very reassuring about Grandma's house being there, rock-solid, something I could count on to remain the same. 

This was taken a couple of years before Grandma died.  She went out to feed table scraps to the dog and I took the snapshot.  I love this picture because it's so natural, I can almost hear her speaking.

Down memory lane

My daughter, Rachel, posted the following video some time back; I don't listen to modern country music, so it was new to me.  Surprisingly, I liked it.  It sounds folksy, and you know how I love folk music.   





Rachel can identify with the song because she grew up in the same house, from the time she started first grade until she graduated.  It's the house we vacated three years ago, the house in which Cliff's sister resides now.  We could move back into it if we wanted; after all, it's our house.      
My parents never lived in one spot long enough for me to really feel that strongly about any house we lived in, but there are a couple of houses I do feel that way about.  

One was Grandma Stevens' house; that's it, behind my cousin Betty, me, and my cousin Royce.  

Here's a shot taken from the road on one of those Sundays or holidays when we all gathered there.  You can even see the smokehouse.  

The quality of this picture isn't great, but on the left side of the picture is Grandma's pump, next to the smokehouse.  
I regret there are so few pictures taken inside Grandma's house.  I've always wished I had a picture of her sitting in her rocking chair, crocheting.  I'd love to have a picture of her sitting upstairs at her quilting frame.  She spent a lot of time in those two locations.  There's no reason why I couldn't have pictures inside Grandma's house:  I received a Brownie camera for my fifteenth birthday, and the flash attachment worked great.  I just never stopped to think that one day she wouldn't be around, and all I'd have left of her house would be the memories.   
I can still close my eyes and walk around her house, in my mind.  I know where the refrigerator stands, and the cookie jar and the table.  I know which corner the stove was, and the breadbox.  I know exactly where she kept the Hi-Ho crackers.  I can almost see her sitting on a tall stool at the cupboard, making noodles or assembling pies. 
Grandma didn't rearrange her furniture, or buy new stuff.  She had the same kitchen table until the day she died.  When you're a kid it's a comfort to know there's someplace you can go that will be the same as last time you saw it.  Especially when your parents change residences every three or four years, sometimes oftener.  
About a half-mile up the road from Grandma was Uncle Leo's farm; for many years it stayed the same too, but eventually they added plumbing, with running water in the kitchen, and a bathroom.  They also enclosed the front porch and made it part of the living room.  Still, it had the feel of "going back home" when we visited there, changed or not.  
I've decided it's a part of getting old, this business of reminiscing about old times and old places, the feeling that we've lost something along the way.  I accept it, but I don't have to like it.

I still go there in my mind

We moved a lot, when I was a kid; oh, we stayed in the same general area of Iowa for my first eight or nine years, but we lived in several different houses. I can remember living in the switchboard house in Nodaway, and a couple of houses belonging to a farmer named Ted Davies, for whom my dad worked sometimes. I have a fairly good recollection of the switchboard house at Guss. But to stroll down memory lane and go on a mental walk-through, I can't visualize those houses very well.

There were three homes that remained constant throughout my growing-up years: Grandma's house, Uncle Leo's house, and the first house my sister and her husband purchased in Kansas City. I have no pictures of Uncle Leo's house (it would be nice if a cousin would send me one), and none of the exterior of my sister's first home. But Grandma's house is featured in pictures taken as far back as my mother's childhood. It never really changed.

I don't know why I'm trying to choke my cousin Betty in this picture. You can see Grandma's clothesline pole to the right, and behind it, her smokehouse. I can smell the milky odor of the smokehouse even now; that's where Grandma would sit on a stool (or was it the edge of a table?) and turn the crank of her cream separator after milking Patsy, her Guernsey cow. I can hear the whirring noise the separator made, and see the cream coming out of one spigot and milk out of another.

This is a view from the road, obviously at the time of some family gathering. See the big evergreen tree to the left (that's the front yard) of the house? There was an identical one behind it; my cousins and I sometimes crawled under the cave-like shelter of that pair of trees and built things with twigs that were lying on the ground. There's the smokehouse again.

You can see the porch extending off the house in the background; I remember far, far back when Grandma still had an ice box that sat on the left side of that porch when you walked in. She kept her African Violets on the porch until outside temperatures got down to freezing; then she took them in the kitchen. You'd walk in the porch door and go straight ahead into the kitchen. To the right of the kitchen door was a narrower door that led out back to the outhouse. To the right of that, the door to the cellar; so if Grandma needed to go to the cellar, she didn't have to step outside to get there. That's me in the middle with my cousins, Betty and Royce. They lived down the road from Grandma. The dog is Tippy.

I could absolutely walk you through every room in Grandma's house and describe the furniture and all the objects in those rooms. I can shut my eyes and see it all. It's amazing, really, the details that are etched into my brain, and how vivid the memories are.

When you're a kid, it's important to have some rock-solid things in your life that don't change. Going to Grandma's house, or Uncle Leo's, or Maxine's, was like going home. They were places I could count on.

I cherish the memories of those places.