In 1956 my parents bought their first home at 691 Jefferson Street in Galesburg, Illinois. Previously they lived in a cramped apartment on Prairie Street and decided to buy a house when my mom was pregnant with me. They would live at 691 Jefferson Street for 55 years.
The house was a medium sized bungalow, built in 1913. I believe we were only the third family to live there. It was painted gray with white trim and was set back about 20 feet from Jefferson Street, which at the time was paved with local bricks. It had a decently sized back yard bordered by maple and evergreen trees. My mother was an ambitious gardener and eventually had a series of seasonal gardens, which bloomed and peaked throughout the spring and summer.
Both of my parents were working artists. My dad was art professor at Knox College and in the early years my mom taught art at Churchill Jr. High School. She later took a position at Carl Sandburg Jr. College. Until it was renovated, the attic served as their studio. The attic space was open and raw; the walls were painted spinach green. The space was illuminated by bare light bulbs hanging from cords. There were painting easels set up on the north end with working tables covered with jars of turpentine and oil paint. The paint smells of the attic are one of my earliest olfactory memories.
The front door of the house opened to a living/dining room area, which ran the width of the house. There was a large wooden ceiling beam separating the living and dining room, and two wooden craftsman style posts which rose about half way to the ceiling. I remember when I was very small standing on one of the posts and jumping in to my dad’s arms. After my sister, Leslie, was born and we were old enough to fight, dad would put each of us on one of the posts and conduct a trial. As the judge, he would walk over to one of us and ask for our defense. Then he would walk over and listen to the other case. I don’t remember which of us were found guilty or innocent, but it ended the fight.
My bedroom, which I shared with my sister, was on the first floor. The walls were covered with wallpaper that had a pattern of pink roses. When I was old enough to stand on my bed I would put my nose to the wallpaper to smell the roses. On one side of the bedroom were French doors that opened onto an enclosed back porch. The porch was unheated, but when I was a baby mom would bundle me up, lay me in a basket and keep me on the back porch for about 30 minutes. She subscribed to a piece of German folklore that believed if you exposed young babies to cold air for a small duration each day they would not be as susceptible to illness. As I was a fairly healthy kid, perhaps there was something to it.
Behind the house was an enormous maple tree. At night its swaying branches would cast moving shadows across the ceiling of my bedroom. I looked up and saw a parade of marching animals, circus performers, goblins. I would watch them until I fell asleep and would carry their images into my dreams.
Sometime after my sister was born my dad, who loved music and played the trumpet, purchased a Hi-Fi stereo, which he set up on the north end of the dining room I remember it being a sprawling complicated piece of equipment with a confusion of wires and tubes that glowed orange and reminded me of a wild animal staring out from a cave. My dad had a large collection of albums, mostly jazz. The Hi-Fi introduced me to “Peter and the Wolf” and “The Planets” by Gustav Holst. For Christmas one year I was given a red rocking horse, on springs, which I named “Go-Go”. Go-Go was placed near the Hi-Fi so when my music came on I would rock energetically on the horse to the music’s crescendo.
When I was around four, my parents bought our first television. It was a Zenith black and white. When it was turned on it would take about 2 minutes for the screen to light up. I remember sitting on the sofa with my dad on Sunday mornings and watching Bullwinkle and Bugs Bunny cartoons. My dad would always laugh along. After my sister and I went to bed at night my parents had their evening ritual of watching the Tonight Show with Johnny Carson. They would bring out plates of salami and cheese and drink Falstaff beer from ceramic mugs. On nights when I couldn’t sleep I came out and sat on their laps. I was allowed one piece of salami and cheese and my dad would let me have one sip of his beer. I would rest in the crook of his arm until I fell asleep.
Before the Dutch Elm disease killed them off, Jefferson Street was lined with tall Elms that created a deep green canopy over the street. Most of the people living in the neighborhood were middle class families with young children, but there were also older couples, widows, single people who never married. As children we did not recognize any boundaries between properties or feel any pressure to stay close to home. One of the popular neighborhood gathering places was a sandbox we had in our back yard. We would build cities, tear them down and re-build. I had a collection of small plastic dinosaurs that became the residents of the sand cities. We would spend hours creating domestic dramas in the lives of the dinosaurs. Later, on summer evenings with our friends we would explore the neighborhood by flashlight, catch fireflies in glass jars, and on occasions when we were in the mood for mischief would sneak out and “TP” the surrounding houses. Their owners would wake up the next morning and for a moment think they were witnessing a rare summer snowstorm.
My parents had a mind set toward conservation. Perhaps because they were children of the Great Depression, or because of some bohemian attitude, wasting energy was one of the greatest sins in our house. Lights were not to be left on in rooms that were unoccupied. In winter, heat was turned on just high enough to keep icicles from forming indoors. There were two heating vents in the living and dining room area, each covered with an iron grate. My sister and I would crouch in front of them waiting for the sound of the furnace to come on and enjoy the few minutes of warm air to take the chill out of our feet.
When I was about 10 or 11 my parents renovated the attic and created separate bedrooms for my sister and me. My bedroom faced south and my sister’s faced west under the sloping roof of the house. Dad put in a “secret” passageway, which connected our closets. Our bedrooms upstairs were even more challenged by the elements. The furnace heat struggled to reach the second floor so we would sleep under heaps of blankets. Summers were sweltering. Mom put a fan in the north window to create a cross breeze and told us to imagine mountain glaciers. My sister claims during one heat wave, rubber bands wrapped around her bedroom door handles melted. On those hot summer nights I would sleep with my face next to the window. Over the sounds of the electric fan, I could hear the distant train whistles from the Santa Fe and Burlington Northern tracks. In our neighbor’s yard I could see a tall cedar tree that stood black and drooping in the summer humidity. But, when a strong storm blew through, its branches would bend and leap like a Russian dancer.
When we grew older our parents anti-materialist morals relaxed a bit. The center of energy in the house moved from the front rooms to the back. We took off the old enclosed porch and created a family room. We purchased our first color TV and then acquired cable. A window air conditioner was installed and then shortly before my sister and I went away to college, central air arrived! The narrow kitchen was remodeled and then the downstairs bathroom. As these improvements took place, the house acquired a different character. It became more comfortable and normal. It was tamed. The oil paint smells were gone. My sister and I brought our boyfriends over, then our husbands.
My parents lived together at 691 Jefferson until my dad was moved to a nursing home in Knoxville in 2011. My mom lived alone until she died suddenly from heart failure in November the same year. My dad followed her three weeks later.
The current owners have a large Welcome banner over the front door. There are wicker chairs and pots of flowers on the front porch When Patrick and I drive by at night we can see the flat screen TV illuminating the front room. The large maple tree that cast the animal shadows is gone, but the dancing cedar tree is still there. Sometimes I think about knocking on the front door to ask if I can come inside. But I don’t because it is not my house and I would be a stranger there.
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