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| Then |
In an unexpected turn of events, we traveled 25 miles
southeast of Podunk to another, even smaller, Podunk… Having been sick with a cold for more than a
week, I was glad to get out of the house and “see the world” as it were…
We traveled to a quaint little town east of Podunk to visit
my favorite antiques shop. Afterwards,
we stopped in at the hardware store.
Truly, a hardware store, with creaky wood floors, items displayed in
divided shelves, and an old-fashioned heater grate in the floor.
Ever solicitous about my health, he asked me if I wanted to
go home…. I said “no” because I was enjoying being out in the sunshine. And so, he had an adventure in mind: “let’s
go to Lindsay (an even smaller Podunk) and find the house you lived in….”
I don’t know why, all these years later, that I remember the
name of the street we lived on….But I do.
And I found it on my iPhone’s Google Maps app. As we drove through town, the little blue dot
on the screen was moving with us, ever nearer to Linda Vista Drive.
I remember what the house looked like because I have several
photos of family in front of it. My
mother told me once that the house was featured in Sunset Magazine in 1947. I
don’t know if that is true or was invented by a realtor who wanted my parents
to buy the house. I think I may have to
look into that at some point…
I felt a lump in my throat as we drove down the street…..and
there, at the turn in the road, was the house.
I remember it as being gray—the color of the kitschy cinder-blocks used
to build it—and now it is a beigy-gold paint color. The window frames are still hunter green, and
the windows are original, too. A cooler
is precariously perched in one of the bedroom windows, and the lawn is winter
dead.
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| Now |
Although we only lived in that house for a couple of years,
and I was VERY young, I do remember lots of things about it. For instance, the bathroom floor was black
marble. Why do I remember that? Perhaps because I spilled my mother’s face
powder on it and she thought she would never get it all cleaned up…
My favorite spaces in that house were all outdoors. There was a screened-in sleeping porch along
the entire back of the house and I would sleep there at night during the long,
hot summers. Just beyond that porch was
the back patio, which was huge. It was
angled and free-form to make it blend into the back lawn in a pleasing
fashion.
One of my favorite things to do (remember: I was VERY young)
was to push Daddy’s push mower across the patio, delighting in the
clackety-clack sounds it made on the cement.
I do remember the last time I did that, too, as Daddy was home for lunch
and came outside to ask me to “stop doing that!”
I remember the houses on each side of ours, too. On the one side was the “elderly” neighbor
with the apricot tree. I amazed my
neighborhood friends by being brazen enough to sneak into her back yard and
steal an apricot from her tree. Not only
that, I stopped at the faucet under her kitchen window and washed it off before
running out front to eat it in front of my cohorts…
On the other side of our house was the home of my best
playmate and friend. She and I had some
great adventures, such as painting her porch red with the blooms on my mother’s
rose bush. Also not a popular pastime with
adults…
That relationship had its ups and downs, too. When I was allowed to paint the picket fence
on her side of the back yard (remember, I was too young to have read “Tom
Sawyer”), she was upset that I wouldn’t let her help me. I tried to explain that my mother told me
just to paint our side of the fence, and that she had to ask her mother before
she could paint her side of the fence…..
She was frustrated and slapped me—hard—on my cheek. Without thinking, I ‘slapped’ her with my
paintbrush across her cheek. After
hearing both of us shriek, our mothers both came out of the house and, needless
to say, neither one of us got to do any more painting….
We had moved to that little town because that’s where Daddy
found a job after the war. I also
remember why we left that house and that town….
It was Christmastime, 1950, and my mother was busy getting
ready for Christmas. One of the things
she did to “get ready” was to take down the living room curtains and wash and
iron them. It was a whole day’s chore, I’m
sure. And then, on Christmas Eve, the
weather dropped to below freezing. Since
that little town is situated in the middle of miles and miles of orange groves,
the night air smelled of the smudge pots burning all around us, keeping the
oranges from freezing.
Perhaps it worked, and the crop was saved. I really don’t know. What I DO know is that, on Christmas morning,
my mother shrieked when she saw her newly-washed and ironed curtains: they were
now charcoal gray, thanks to the freezing temperatures and smudge pots…
By the next Christmas, we had moved here, to Podunk, to the
very house where I am writing this…
We had prolonged freezing temperatures here in Podunk last
night….maybe that’s why I was thinking about that house in that even smaller
Podunk, 25 miles away…
Cali
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