And Furthermore

So we moved from the less than five thousand population Big City back to Hubby's home place to build our own little house in the country. We had saved eight hundred dollars to begin building. In the early seventies, that went pretty far....not so much so now.

With a lot of help from everyone, we moved into our tiny house shortly before our son's second birthday. We bought a few things as we could and finished it month by month and year by year. Maybe that is not entirely true. When we moved a year ago, the bathroom hallway still did not have ceiling trim.

You can barely see our son in the front yard. It is obvious we did not have our front porch built yet. I cropped the old clothesline I used to hang clothes out on. Chiggers would get on the bedclothes. I swear! You could see the little red things all over the white sheets. You can see the television antennae we used to get channels 4 and 11....on our black and white television. I remember watching Sonny and Cher, Laugh In, and Johnny Carson on the Tonight Show. That was back when we were able to stay awake past 10:30.

For some reason we built at the top of a long and steep driveway that we sometimes had to walk up when it was icy and slick. Although we were only a half a mile from the main road, you could not see the road from our house.

I walked my five year old to the bus stop when he started school in 1976. Coming home, I had to stop halfway up the hill to catch my breath as I was huge with my second baby. After she was born, I had to send him to the bus stop by himself. Although I worried about him waiting on the bus out on that country road, it was not for the same reasons I would today. That was back in the days we sent him to the toy department while we shopped at Wal Mart. Crazy, huh?

We brought our daughter home from the hospital to that old house that was not so old then. She never lived in another house until she married. She frequently reminds us of the corner she was made to stand in for HOURS! That was her voice rising when she talks about it. It is the house I heard every rustle of the covers when I moved our two year to the bedroom across the hall.

We made a yard out of the abandoned peach orchard terraces and planted huge gardens in the back yard. We transplanted flower bulbs and shrubs from the home Hubby was raised. There are enough trees there that we kept the wood stove going all winter. All of our neighbors were kinfolk.

We stayed in the little painted blue house after both the kids married and moved away. We stayed there as they made their homes on the same place their dad was raised. It was where the grandchildren could walk to Nana's and Papa's. It was the little house we had to put pallets in the living room floor when all of them spent the night. It is where it did not matter if they painted with water colors or played with Play Doh and decorated Easter eggs.

And then after the kids were gone and the little house was not quite as small, we moved to a large house in the next community over. The grandchildren can no longer walk to our house.

The old place is still there and is full of our old comfortable furniture. Our bedroom has the iron bedstead I got when Mama and Daddy died. There is even two saddles in our daughter's old bedroom. What????????

I could move back there if it was cleaned thoroughly and aired out good...and if it had a new roof on it...and a new heat and air unit...and new carpeting...and new plumbing. Oh, and if Hubby would get rid of all that so-called merchandise around it.