The home I was born in was already old. It was built in the latter part of the 19th century. Two stories with a basement. Originally it had wood siding painted white. Later, Dad covered that with Insulbrick. It was a fake brick that even as a child, I thought was extremely ugly. Eventually, it was recovered with white wood siding. In the final configuration, the first floor had a kitchen, pantry,dining room, bathroom, and living room. The second floor had four bedrooms and a small storage room. This little room in the front of the house was a great place to hide or sit in to watch lightning since Mom wouldn't let us sit outside to watch. There was a small porch on the streetside which was a great launching pad for us when we did our stilt walking since they had gotten so tall that we couldn't get on them from the ground. The final height for the footholds was over four feet. That was fun for us walking on them and my brother making them. There was a porch on the rear of the house. Originally it was open and later enclosed. This was used to store boots and anything else that didn't have a real home. For a long time, Mom kept a relic of former times in the form of a coat that my brother wore that we called "The Rug" because it looked very much like one of those brown bristly outdoor mats(felt like it too). Then there was the basement. It was dark and musty because it had a dirt floor and only two tiny windows. In the furnace room, there was a single light bulb in the ceiling near the furnace. There was a separate room where the coal was stored. We loved to watch the coal being delivered. A dump truck would drive into the lawn and pull up to the house. Someone would open the window to the coal room and then they would dump the coal in with such a loud noise an flurry of black dust. Remember we didn't have tv or computers. We had to take our fun in whatever was available. Mom stored some of her oldest plants down there. One of them was a Christmas cactus that she said was Dad's grandmother's and over 100 years old. That is also where the home canned fruits and vegetables were stored on rough hewn shelves. Some found the basement scary but to me the scary part of the house was the room my sister and I had to go through to get to our bedroom. Our parents had a lifesize portrait of Dad's brother who had died as a child stored in that room facing out and we would see that long dead boy looking at us every night. We would run very fast through that room to reach the safety of our room with the door closed tight protecting us from whatever lived in that scary dark room and we were sure there was something there waiting for us to slow down long enough for it to catch us. The house sat on a one acre lot and earlier there had been a barn, chicken house and machinery shed there. The barn and chicken house were torn down early in my lifetime and replaced by a two car garage. I remember playing in the haymow of the barn but do not remember the chicken house. The machinery shed lasted longer and housed a threshing machine. We loved to play on this old dusty greasy machine. Poor Mom she had the laundry and we had the fun. In the summer, Dad would plant half of the lot into garden. Lots of strawberries, corn, potatoes and tomatoes. There were also ground cherries that came up each year and a rhubarb patch. In the spring, we were given the task of picking the potato bugs off the plants and putting them in a can filled with kerosene. Dad never used chemicals or poisons. He hoed the weeds and we picked bugs and thought it was fun. There was also the outhouse until it met its fiery end in a cooking accident mentioned earlier.
The home was warm and happy. Mom would welcome all visitors even the hobos who would walk over from the railroad tracks and ask for food. There were always cookies or cakes to offer guests and the wonderful coffee she would brew. It was safe there and there was love enough for all of us.
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