Column by Donna Jobe Cronk
I haven’t been inside the Union County house where my father grew up since about 1966 when it left our family after Grandma moved in with us. Yet to me, it will forever be “Grandma’s house.”
Even though I would have been young when this happened, I remember the place so well that I could go inside today and find my way through it in the dark, attic to basement, first floor to second. Of course, the question begs, why would I ever want to do that?
I could show you exactly where the marble-top buffet sat in the kitchen, and how the table was centered in that room—the same table that’s in the middle of my kitchen now. I still picture the hot-pink peppermints in the candy jar; the print of the old-fashioned children on the wall.
I could take you to the back porch where Grandma kept a jar of mysterious stones –as in human kidney or gallstones. Was that a thing to save at one time?
It was a long, unfurnished utility porch, and highly useful, I imagine, for holding work clothes or buckets of green beans that awaited canning, never mind storage of those human-generated stones.
My mind’s eye still sees the beautiful four-poster bedroom set that later became my brother’s, and then my older brother’s and his wife’s; the piano Grandma got as a girl, that now belongs to her great-granddaughter. There was the bathroom with the pink-and-black tile, stylish in the 1950s.
I remember where the Jesus picture hung on the living room wall, and upstairs, the rose-adorned hat box that graced a closet shelf.
Ordinary objects, all of them, but ones that took on a special value, because, well, because it was Grandma’s house.
Members of the family that bought her residence lived there until recently. And now, the place is empty for the first stretch of time, I surmise, since it was built in the 1800s. That house has belonged in only two families during parts of three centuries is my understanding.
When I’m rarely in the vicinity, the property draws me to it. I pull over, get out of the car, and gaze through the windows where coverings are sparse. My eyes take in every inch squeezed from the limited views.
The elegant partial staircase is gone, and I see the two or three steps that usher people to the second floor. The wall between the kitchen and living room has been removed, creating a modern open-concept space that doesn’t look right in such an old house.
The back porch appears walled off now. In the bedroom where Grandma’s piano sat, a closet takes its place.
The thing is, people have done a lot of living in that space since 1966. It has changed. Why is it any of my business? It isn’t.
I have many belongings from a mirror to Victorian-era furnishings that came from the home. I know where they go there, where Grandma had placed them.
It’s an eerie feeling, looking inside this empty place. Somehow, I feel like an intruder even though I peer inside from a public sidewalk.
Before ready, I leave to rejoin my 2022 life that calls me into the present, away from the 1960s.
I’ve thought about asking someone in that community to alert me if a date is set for a real estate open house. Part of me would love to walk through the entire place, attic to basement, and take it all in. No, not to buy it; that isn’t something I even want to do, nor have any reason nor thought of doing. I just want to experience it one last time.
A decade ago, my brother Tim and I decided to find the home in another town where my mother lived as a child. He knew that her folks had lived in two different places on the same street in Richmond, and was unsure of where they would have resided when she was born in 1913.
I had an idea. I knew that old city directories list where residents lived, and what they did for livings. We called the Richmond library and asked for a 1913 address for my grandparents. The librarian provided it immediately.
Tim and I drove to the house, and found that it was empty and had a for-sale sign on it. We were able to go through it and even took photos. It had been restored; ready for a new family to call home. It felt as though we were inside a historic site; I guess we were.
I attribute my interest in old family homes to my mother. The house that haunted her past, so to speak, was a two-story brick, likely pre-Civil War, on a farm where her paternal grandparents had lived between Centerville and Abington. For all my childhood, when we drove past it, we went as slowly as humanly possible, and Mom expressed a longing to go inside one more time. It became my life goal to get her there.
As an adult in my early thirties, it happened. My brother had stopped by that house, newly purchased by a young family after decades of ownership by a single man who didn’t want company. Tim arranged a visit.
When the day arrived, I was a nervous wreck, wanting with everything in me for the day to go well. I even took the lady of the house a hostess gift: a pair of elegant tea towels. I liked imagining those towels staying in that house, even though I only got to remain there for an hour or so.
Mom was ushered through the entire home, and even into the spring house she remembered from her youth. I think it was the happiest day I ever spent with her. Not because there were no other happy days, but because this was her dream come true.
As for going through my father’s childhood home, even if there is an open house and I find out about it, I think I shall pass. Maybe.
Maybe it’s best not to confuse the scenes I remember from age eight of where everything goes with how things are now. Maybe I should leave the past where I left it in 1966.
Maybe.
Time will tell. It always does.
On another note: Please join me at 1 p.m. Saturday, April 2 in the Union County Public Library where I’ll give a talk about my new book. Copies of the book will be for sale for $15 cash or check, Indiana Sales Tax included in that number.
I’ll be sharing stories from the book that relate to growing up in Union County.
Union County native Donna Cronk is retired from the New Castle Courier-Times. She still writes columns for three newspapers, and this blog. She is author of the new memoir, There’s a Clydesdale in the Attic: Reflections on Keeping and Letting Go. Connect with her on email: newsgirl.1958@gmail.com or call her at 317-224-7028.