Mary at Owlhaven is sponsoring a meme today, July 20, called My Childhood Home. She says, “I’d like you all to consider writing about your childhood home. It doesn’t matter how big or small it was. All the memories don’t have to be picture-perfect. If you moved a lot, it’s fine to pick one favorite house. What I want to hear are details that were important to you as a child: your secret hideout under the stairs, the single-paned picture window you licked and froze your tongue to one winter morning, the backyard tree you climbed, the way your mother washed your hair in the kitchen sink every Saturday night, or any other strong indelible memory you have.” She has a Mr. Linky here so that anyone who wants to participate can write a post on their blog and put the link on that post. More details are here.

We moved around quite a bit when I was younger, so I don’t have a memory of one old family homestead. I think that would be neat, though! But the one home I most associate with my childhood is my grandfather’s. We lived with him for several years. I don’t even really remember much about the house itself except that it was a yellowish color. I do remember the address, and if I am ever back in Corpus Christi, I want to try to find it.

So, lacking those details, I am just going to share some memories associated with that house, if that’s ok.

• My grandfather had a very distinctive laugh, and he loved to tease, so he laughed often. Even now, though he has been gone many years, whenever I think of him his laugh is the first thing that comes to mind.
• My brother was born in that house when I was four years old, but it was not a planned home birth. My mother had been to the doctor that day, but he told her she wouldn’t deliver any time soon. She had a horrible backache and was probably experiencing back labor but was unaware that that’s what it was. There was a bathroom that connected my bedroom and my parents’, and that evening my mom was in there when she cried out for my dad. He came and picked her up and took her to their room — and shut the door. I couldn’t figure out why they wouldn’t let me in, but being raised to be an obedient child, I went back to bed as I was told. My grandfather came through to check on me. Then some time later I was told I had a baby brother, and I got to see him all asleep in his bassinet. They did have to go on to the hospital for a couple of days because of the “unsanitary” birth, as it was called, and I stayed with our neighbor, Mrs. Beeson.
• I don’t remember at all what Mrs. Beeson’s face looked like because she wore those big old Little House on the Prairie type bonnets. She puttered around in her yard a lot. She had what I remember as an enormous (though it probably wasn’t that big) woodsy area out behind her house with a table, potting shelves and materials, and all kinds of little tins and things for making mud pies and such. A lot of the neighbor children often played back there.
• When my brother was older, we shared a bunk bed: I had the top bunk and he had the bottom one. When he was little he was always having adventurous dreams involving wild animals. He woke up in the night and went to tell my parents that he saw a snake in the springs under the top bunk (in those days that was all open). They thought he was just dreaming and tried to get him to go back to bed, but he kept insisting. So one of them came back to the bedroom to reassure him that everything was all right, and found that there was a snake, by that time on my bed not far from my head! I don’t remember the sequence of events, but soon I was up and the snake was on the floor, and Mrs. Beeson was there cutting it in half with her ax (she was just the type of lady who would have an ax handy and know how to use it). She said it wasn’t poisonous: she called it an egg snake. It was discovered there was a nest with eggs in it in the window next to the beds, and that was probably what it was after. But what I remember most was the way the snake continued to writhe and open and close its mouth after it was chopped in half.
• I used to be kind of fearful at night (I don’t remember if this was before or after the snake incident!) and one night I saw a rounded shadowy shape beside my bed. I convinced myself it was a headhunter (don’t ask me why…) and that if I just kept my eyes closed, he would leave me alone. When I woke up the next morning, I saw the rounded shape was the teddy bear beside me.
• There was a man who came to the house to sell coffee often. I don’t know exactly how that all worked, but I do remember he called me Goldilocks.
• I had forgotten this til I saw Lyndy mention it, but most nights after dinner, people would come out to their front yards with lawn chairs and watch their kids play and visit with each other. For a time my dad had a motor scooter and he would take kids for rides up and down the street.
• I used to be quite a tree climber and I do remember climbing a tree in the front yard, especially when I was playing something imaginary. I don’t know if it was at this house or another, but one house had four chinaberry trees in the back which several neighborhood kids and I would climb and through chinaberries at each other.
• A couple of the other childhood home posts reminded me of something else characteristic of homes in the late 50s and 60s: Venetian blinds and box fans. That triggered memories of big TVs with rabbit ears (sometimes tipped in foil) that also had big tubes in that big that had to be taken out and replaced sometimes, and humongous stereo cabinets.

There are other vague memories associated with that house — my grandfather reading the newspaper, my brother in cowboy boots and a diaper playing with kittens, my mom making a snack of graham crackers and peanut butter and honey — I think we were still there when my sister was born when I was eight and my brother was four, because I remember staying with Mrs. Beeson again, this time with my brother.

Thanks, Mary, for this trip down memory lane!