Home for me was a two-story brick house in a Fort Worth, Texas, neighborhood built in the 1920s and 30s. Berkeley Place, if you know Fort Worth, is between downtown and Texas Christian University, and between the Zoo and the 8th Avenue railroad tracks. I lived there from four to fifteen years old, oldest of four children.
I remember the house very well, could draw the floor plan, but I can’t say I have any special feelings about it. It was just where we lived. We were certainly a happy family there, and I’m guessing that the neutral feeling I have came from my mother’s attitude. My parents bought that house through the generosity of a family friend who didn’t ask for a down payment. Recently returned from the Korean War, Dad had few resources as he began his career as a doctor. I think I absorbed my mother’s dissatisfaction with the house during the last few years there, as she searched for a house to buy that she liked. We moved to a more attractive house in Westcliff, which my parents thought was a better part of town, after I was in high school.
All the memories that bring me a warm feeling of “Yeah, I loved that,” are outside that childhood house. The pecan tree outside the kitchen door, where we built a sketchy treehouse, and the sandbox below it. The “cave” in the bushes which screened the front porch from the street. The streetlight in the yard next-door, so perfect as home base in an evening game of hide and seek. And then the trampoline, a stunning surprise one Christmas morning. These memories bring me smiles, every time.
Our house was dull tan-brown bricks, steeply roofed, with a tall, droopy cedar tree alongside the front door blocking the kitchen windows. Thinking back, the houses I liked on our block were ones with crisp red bricks or clean cream-colored bricks. The house to the west was especially notable to me for having a huge yard (a double lot), no children, and a little cream brick house behind where a very old grandmother lived. The house directly across was like a museum, where a girl three years older lived with much older parents and seemed like a princess to me. Breakable beautiful objects decorating every surface, a four-poster bed, and even a basement, the only one I’d ever seen. I read a lot and appreciated details that were like that in stories. Branches of a huge tree in the neighbors’ yard to the east reached almost to my second story window. (Did you see the movie Pollyanna? Source of the tree fantasy.) I longed for that tree to be closer to my window so I could escape whenever I wanted and have amazing adventures.
My parents weren’t into making a design statement. Our furniture came from friends or estate sales or auctions. Refinished, painted, re-upholstered. My dad’s baby grand piano was a hand-me-down, too. Our house was noisy and messy, full of toys and books and pets and stuff. Thinking back, my friends’ homes were different, quiet, orderly. Is that why I was so fond of the outdoor spaces? Or because we were always shooed outdoors to play? When I became a parent, that same atmosphere felt right, providing a comfortable, welcoming place for kids. Some disorder is okay. Having some space indoors or out for a getaway or hideout is important. A piano is good to have around, along with lots of books, and records, tapes, and CDs to sing along with and to dance to. Say, that changes the story! There’s one inside activity that must join the list of warm feelings above. Running around like crazy to Dad’s novelty records playing on the living room stereo: “Gitarzan,” “Tijuana Taxi,” “Zorba the Greek.” Ahhhh, now that is what a living room is for.
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