Dispatches From Hellpeckersville-It’s Just A House

You can say it’s just a house, but it’s been in the family for over 60 years. It sits right next door, on the corner of my street, a big double house, run down, empty, and with an auction sign in the yard. My Grandparents lived there. I was a baby when my Grandfather died, so I don’t really remember him, but he died there. My Grandparents had nine kids, several of them started their marriages in that house, including my parents. My parents bought this house next door when they were able, I was two, but my Grandmom watched me while Mom worked, so I spent a good deal of my childhood in that house, but I’m not the only one that will cry when it goes.

There were about a dozen of us cousins, plates balanced on our knees, eating our Thanksgiving dinners staggered up that staircase every year. Moms still in the kitchen randomly filling plates and bowls while the men ate the first shift of food. People say your cousins are your first friends, and in our case that was true. There were always an older set and a younger set of cousins to run around and get up to something with in Grandmom’s house. At the very least there was a kid covering every surface in the parlor when Ed Sullivan came on Gram’s deluxe 19 inch B&W teevee-with rabbit ears!

The grown-up were fond of playing cards, and by that I mean poker. They didn’t play Texas Hold ‘Em, that’s newfangled stuff, but we would hear the dealer call out the game, things like “Follow The Queen” or “7 Card Stud.” The dining room would be thick with smoke, rising towards the light fixture, as the adults laughed, and argued, and played the night away, and we kids looked for deviltry to get up to. We never had to look far. By this time it was just Gram and Uncle Billy living on the big side, and there was so much house at our disposal.

It usually would go something like this: We would do something, one of the aunts would get up from the table for a refill on a drink or to use the bathroom, realize it was way too quiet, check on us, catch us at whatever we were doing, wildly over-react, we would all act chastised for a suitable few minutes, the aunt would go back to the card game, and we would go about our business. But let me tell you about my favorite bit of shenanigans. When you entered the house there was a door to the left that went into the parlor, a long hallway that led to the kitchen, and a staircase that led upstairs. The dining room, where the poker game happened, was beyond the parlor, and if you went down that hallway to the kitchen, it was to the left of the kitchen. The game was in full swing, and I honestly don’t remember what was the impetus for what followed, but suffice it to say that we cousins were bored. We started running down that hall and sliding into the kitchen. The kitchen floor was linoleum, not very slippery. We weren’t making it past the table. But there, there on the table, what do we see? A stick of butter!

So there we are buttering the kitchen floor. Had anyone at the lower end of the poker table even looked over their shoulder through the kitchen doorway it might have occurred to them to wonder what those kids were doing on their hands and knees out there, but nobody did. That butter worked a treat, let me tell you. My first run took me well past the stove. Wheeee! Strangely enough, child after child whizzing across the kitchen floor also attracted no attention. No, it wasn’t until Aunt Sara need to actually come into the kitchen and damn near landed on her ass, and caught one of us bounding down the hall that we were caught. Oh, man. She went off! Were we trying to kill our grandmom? What horrible children! She then proceeded to sprinkle sugar all over the floor, I’m guessing she thought that would act as some sort traction? Like sawdust, maybe? She then chased us all and went right back to the poker game. I don’t recall who was the first to test the impact of the sugar, or how long we waited, all I can tell you is that the sugar was more like ball bearings than sawdust, and I made it to the far wall. And, no, we weren’t trying to kill grandmom, the mess was mopped up after the poker game with hot water and spic ‘n span.

At one time, the two rooms in the attic of that house were occupied by various aunts and their husbands until they were ready to move out to their own houses, but by the time I was a kid, there was a pool table up there. When the men would play, us kids had to stay out, but when there were just a gang of us at Gram’s? Oh, fun times. The older cousins would actually play, but while us younger ones might start out with the intention of playing, we usually wound up just wildly rolling the balls down the table. Naturally, one day one of those balls sailed right off that table and through the window. I will never forget the silence that fell over that room, and the wide-eyed panicky glances that circled round for a brief moment before we all scrambled for the steps to head out into the yard in search of the 13 ball. Gram later said a damn pigeon must have broken her window, and none of us disabused her of that notion. Kids can be such rotten little shits, eh?

More than the memories I share with my cousins, there are all the times that it was just me and Gram. How I was the one who got to help with the Christmas cookies. How she told me exactly what she was doing every time she made “slop” (milk) pies, so that to this day I know the recipe that she never bothered to write down. How it made me feel so special that she allowed me to dust her massive salt and pepper shaker collection. The year that Christmas wasn’t coming fast enough for me, and I was getting in trouble left and right, and Gram gave me a little set of puzzles, it wasn’t a big thing, but it saved my bacon. How Gram brought home a dachshund from her visit to California and told me it was my dog too, and every day he was my Pepper doggy, wagging his tail so hard when he saw me his whole back end went with it.

Then, my Uncle Bill did something unexpected. At the age of 42 he got married. Gram would come live with us, here, next door, and for the rest of her life, she did. The house was still in the family, but no gatherings were ever held there again. The small side was closed up and fell into disrepair. At one time, work began to restore it, was abandoned, and Cleetus and I offered to pay to finish it, for eight month’s rent, and then to start paying monthly for however long it would last. It lasted about two years. From that moment on, we knew it was probably just a matter of time before the house would go, but we hoped not, or I should say we wished.

So, Mr Auctioneer, when you’re taking bids next week, you may think that what you’re selling is just a house, but it’s not. It’s the story of a family, our history, our memories, our childhoods. And while nobody can take those things from us, they will always live in our hearts, and the house that holds them all is on the block. I know I won’t be the only one crying the day it happens, but I am here, right next door, and I might just be crying the hardest.