We’ve been in the process of preparing for a remodeling project on the upper floor of our home–replacing our carpet with a wood floor. We are excited about the change but a bit overwhelmed in cleaning out closets and cupboards and shelves–the accumulations of over thirty years in a place.
For me, it also brought back memories of cleaning out my parent’s home–my childhood home–when they moved into a retirement facility back in 2005. It was a home my parents had lovingly looked after for over 60 years. My mom actually signed the papers a year after they were married, while my dad was away in the army during World War II.
The tree on the far left of the picture is a maple we bought and planted in our tree lawn for my mother on Mothers’ Day one year–now grown to the place where it had to be trimmed to avoid overhead powerlines. We all invested in caring for that place.
From the front sidewalk, you could walk to our front porch, up four steps to our front porch. We probably spent thousands of summer evenings cooling off on that porch. We used to have big green awnings to shade the porch from the afternoon sun, a big metal swing and metal porch chairs that still hang in my garage. I remember listening to Herb Score offer play-by-play accounts of Indians games on summer evenings.
The front door, with an aluminum screen door with a “T” in the middle opened into our living room. Just to the right was my mom’s yellow wing chair, now sitting in my family room. She would sit there doing crosswords or reading a book of the month book. We had a matching sofa and chair that was dull magenta to dull pink in color. At the far end of the room were bookshelves that were a treasure trove to this bookish kid. The chair was next to it and next to it our TV. We moved the chair at Christmas to make room for the tree, always decorated by my father–a work of art.
Our dining room was to the left of the front entrance. Eventuallly we had a dining room set from my grandparents, now owned by my son and daughter-in-law. My favorite spot, though was the Magnavox radio that had a short wave receiver. Sometimes, you could hear BBC broadcasts from London. Later on, my favorite spot moved to the other side of the room, where I would sprawl on the floor while talking on the phone to girls I was interested in.
Our kitchen was entered through the other doorway in our dining room, which was by the phone. I still remember meals watching my sister push vegetables around the plate or picking green peppers off pizza, trying to slip them to the dog if she could! For years we had an old GE refigerator that mom had to defrost every month or so, melting big chunks of ice off the freezer part of the fridge. We always had dogs and the dog’s water and food dish was at the base of the stove. We had no dishwasher. Mom usually washed and rinsed the dishes in the single sink and then put them on the drainer for me to dry and put away. Blocked by the table was a door to an above-ground back porch that was kind of a forbidden kingdom–we never went out there–perhaps because it was about 8-10 feet above ground.
Behind where my dad always sat, were steps down to the basement. At the bottom of the steps, my dad had a desk and some shelves. Later on, we inherited a pool table from my sister when she moved out west and it was a favorite place for my dad and son to spend time together playing pool. At the center of the basement was our furnace, an old Janitrol that lasted forever–as long as the house. On the other side was a water heater. But my favorite spot was my dad’s workbench with his tools and baby food jars with all kinds of screws and nails (which we had to dispose of years later!). But it was the place where I’d make rubber band guns and fix my bike. To the left of the workbench was all my dad’s fishing gear. Next to the work bench area to the left was our old coal cellar, which was used for that purpose before we got a gas furnace. It was basically storage for summer furniture and Christmas decorations. The laundry tubs and washing machine were on the far side of the basement–no dryer. My mom had lines strung back and forth in the basement, so on laundry days, you had to dodge the wash. There was a back door that exited onto our back yard. Since the house was built on an incline, it was ground level.
Back up the steps, through the kitchen, dining room, and living room, up one step to our closet (a step my mom slipped on and broke her ankle when my sister was young, and I tripped on, banging into the wall leaving a dent in the plaster until we repaired it). Then you turned left and took the steps upstairs. The bathroom was at the top of the steps (the bathroom for a family of five–I don’t know how we managed–but there was no lingering in the bathroom!). We had an old clawfoot tub that would probably be worth a fortune today where we took our Saturday night baths (and always had to make sure we scrubbed out to not leave a ring!).
At the top of the steps, the two front bedrooms were on the left. The front bedroom to the right was my parents’, and first me, and then my sister, slept there when young. The front bedroom on the left was my brother’s, until he got married, when it became my room. I spent my teen years there, listening to my stereo and seeing how loud I could play it before my parents said, “turn that thing down!” I had a dresser and chest of drawers that are now in my son’s house. There was also a back bedroom, which was my bedroom until my brother married and then my sister’s. I remember building things with my Erector set and experimenting with a little kit on learning about electricity. I remember getting more ambitious and, at one point, blowing every fuse in the house–yes, that was back in the day of fuses. I also remember loving to look out my back window. Looking straight east, I could see the Home Savings building, and then off to the left, the glow of the mills.
The hallway was also a favorite hangout. We had a set of bookshelves with two beer steins on top. In the shelves was a set of Colliers’ encyclopedias with annual yearbooks that I used for many school assignments. Sometimes it was just fun to pull out a volume and page through until I found an interesting article. The encyclopedias are long gone, and out of date, but the bookshelves are behind me, just to my left, as I write.
As we cleaned out the house, there were memories in every room, even as we are coming across memories of past years in our current cleanout project. We had memories in my parents’ house of holiday parties, birthdays and anniversaries and graduations, meeting girlfriends and boyfriends, eventually sons- and daughters-in law. There were warm memories of prayers and talks before bed. And some fights as well. No family is without them. But so many of the memories were just of every day life–nothing special at the time but ultimately, the most special, because all of them woven together represented home.
It was sad to see what happened in the years that followed my parents moving away. From what I can tell, the house was only lived in for a short while. The bushes were not being trimmed (even when my mom’s vision had diminished, she could spot where I had missed trimming even a single stem!). Then the house was vacant. Scrappers stripped off lower courses of siding and who knows what else. And somewhere around 2015 or so, the house was razed by the city, like so many others. Too many homes and not enough jobs or people.
Thomas Wolfe wrote a novel title You Can’t Go Home Again. That is literally true for me. What made me sad when I saw the empty lot that was formerly my home was not the loss of memories. I carry them with me, along with physical objects from that home. That yellow chair of my mother’s? I can still smell her perfume in that chair! That house will be part of my memories as long as I have memories. That sadness was not the loss of memories, but that there were not others who would lovingly care for that place as we did, especially as my parents did through most of their nearly 69 years of marriage. But the memories remain.
To read other posts in the Growing Up in Working Class Youngstown series, just click “On Youngstown.” Enjoy!
