Housatonic — I saw the picture in the Real Estate section: A large home in Housatonic, spacious, paneled dining room, hardwood floors, a cozy fireplace in the living room.
I recognized the place without looking twice. It was the house I’d grown up in. It took some time, many of my seventy years it seems, to realize, for most of the years I’d lived there, it never really was my home. Unless you define home as the old verse does: home is the place where, when you go there, they have to take you in.
One view was of the meticulously kept lawn. Mowing had been my job when I was there. I used a two-cycle Lawn Boy — “fights like a tiger through the toughest weeds” — I could never start the damned thing. It flooded like a dam-burst river as soon as I pulled the starter cord. I was to blame of course and had to sit inside for an hour or two until I was allowed outside to try again. Most times, since it was already gorged with fuel, I got it going and finished my chore. Invariably one of the persons in charge inspected my work and found it wanting. There are lots of “holidays,” he said. Do it again.
My room, a converted “sleeping porch,” jutted out from the main roof. It was my room because if I ran from someone trying to punish me, I was usually safe if I made it there quickly enough. It was not my room if I hung a picture of a rock group up. “What kind of boy hangs a picture like that in his room. Tear it down. When I tried putting up a picture of the Yankees, it was “Is all you think of sports?” Tear it down.
There was a barbecue out back. I’d helped build it. People in the house used to cook out . We sometimes tried to have family reunions back there. They usually lasted about an hour. It never failed. Someone of the bunch of people always said the wrong word; everyone took sides quickly before they all got pissed off and left. Most of the time I think I was sent to my room.
In college, a bunch of us had a goof and died our hair red. “What kind of man dyes his hair?” I was sent to my room and grounded for a couple of days until, after washing it repeatedly, I’d scrubbed out all the dye.
My guess is you’ve figured it out by now.
Once, in my earlier writing career, after the old folks had moved to Florida, I’d written a mawkish memoir about walking by the red house one night. I made up a bunch of stuff, stuff I thought I should write, stuff about my room, stuff about the people who’d lived there. And how wonderful it all had been.
Time obliterates false sentiment. It is still all it ever was to me. A place to get out of the rain.
