I was born in the small town of Peru, Indiana, and so were my parents. We didn’t live there long after I was born. My parents moved us to Muncie, Indiana, where my dad went back to school to finish his Masters in Music Education. He also led the Salvation Army band there and played bass in a jazz band for several years. After he graduated, he got a job teaching music to schoolchildren of every age in a tiny town called Penneville, Indiana. We lived there for a couple of years until he got a teaching job in Bluffton, Indiana, where my two sisters Apryl and Autumn were born. Then we moved to nearby Columbia City, and from there to Valparaiso, Indiana where our family stayed until 1989. By the time we got to Valpo, which is about 20 minutes from Lake Michigan, I was 8 years old, in the second grade, and I had lived in eight houses; we had moved every year because my father was frequently offered better paying teaching jobs.
All of these houses were rentals, except two: the house in Columbia City and the last house in Valparaiso. The Columbia City house had a coal furnace, tall ceilings, and registers in the floor where Apryl and I could listen to what was going on downstairs when my parents were in the living room. It had a big yard, where my dad planted pear and peach trees which I loved as a kid. But the third Valparaiso house, the house we moved to during the summer between seventh and eighth grade when I was 13, is the one I consider the place where I did my growing up. We all loved our home at 309 Elmhurst, an old farmhouse built in 1900 with a large enclosed front porch where we would play cards and games with our friends when the weather was warm enough. It had a lot of character and a charm that didn’t exist in the other houses we had lived in. My mom was always interested in antiques, so this house was perfect for her. We had many old things from great-grandparents and grandparents, and I still have a few of their pieces.
When you entered the house you saw an oak-paneled front parlor that could be closed off from the living room by solid oak pocket doors. Across from the front door was an 8-foot-tall antique mirror with a marble base. Next to that was a 6-foot built-in oak bench that I would sit on for hours talking to my friends on the phone. Remember party lines? Well, we had one for several years. Finally after my parents grew tired of telling me to get off the phone, we got a private line. The last cool thing in the parlor was an old upright player piano my parents bought and then converted so that my sisters and I could learn to play the piano.
In the dining room there was a built-in china cabinet. A hallway led to the powder room (with floor to ceiling built-in storage cabinets) and the kitchen, which was long and somewhat narrow. There was also a family room next to the dining room which at one time had been a main floor bedroom.
The staircase featured a V shaped window on the landing. There were 4 bedrooms upstairs and one large full bathroom. Behind the bathroom, there was a cedar closet where my mom would store winter or summer clothing. She swears even today there was some kind of spirit in that closet. There was always an eerie feeling when you went into that space.
My bedroom was in the attic that former owners had converted to a living space some years before my parents bought the house. I had to go through my middle sister’s bedroom to get to mine. One year I had been asking about painting my bedroom a burnt orange color, so for Christmas one of my presents was a gallon of orange paint. Orange was so cool in the 70s! One wall had 12” mirrored tiles, also very ‘70s chic. There were built-in desks under dormer windows where I would study.
We had bats from time to time in the bedrooms so we always checked before going to sleep. One night I went to bed as usual, and then I started to hear scratching. I figured it was my mom downstairs doing laundry and hanging clothes on a basement pipe, a sound that often carried upstairs through the radiators. But as I lay there, the sounds became louder and more frequent. Now I was starting to freak out, thinking that I might have missed a bat before turning off the lights. After several minutes of panic, I strategized about how I was going to round the corner from my bed without touching the floor, escape into my sister’s bedroom, and immediately close my door to trap the bat. Somehow I made it, and alerted my dad to get a broom. We slowly opened the door to my bedroom and all of a sudden we heard a soft giggling, then more giggling as my dad and I tried to discover where the bat had landed, and then louder giggling. To our surprise and dismay, my little sister Autumn came crawling out from under my desk! I will never forget that room or night! I got her back later by snapping a picture of her on the toilet. I then created a miniature out-house from a piece of wood and put the picture of her in it… LOL.
There was an in-ground pool in the back yard, and we had many hours of fun there with family and friends. My mom grew her veggies and flowers in a garden. At the end of the school year, my dad would host a senior choir party in the yard for the kids at Valparaiso High School. On the 4th of July there would be a big family and friends party. We also had my wedding shower around the pool for women only; back then, men never came to showers like they do now.
The garage was huge with a full second floor where my dad had a workshop. We didn’t spend much time up there, but one summer a friend of mine talked Autumn into jumping out of the second floor garage window that looked out onto the pool. Needless to say, that was one and done. Thank goodness she survived, but my mom almost had a cow when she heard what my sister had done. We all have great memories of our house and the things that went on there, some of which will live in infamy.
My parents sold our family home in 1989, a month after my twins were born. They moved an hour south to a smaller town on a lake. If you grew up in the Chicagoland area, you might have heard of it: Lake Shafer in Monticello, Indiana, home of Indiana Beach Amusement park. A well-known local TV commercial for Indiana Beach featured a cartoon crow saying “There’s more than corn in Indiana!” Even though my mom still lives in Monticello, and it’s been 32 years, I will always consider the house on Elmhurst home.
Comments