When I think of growing up, think of the place I call my hometown and the house I ‘grew up’ in, I think of the old house in Scio. My parents bought it when I had barely begun first grade. We lived there until mid-fifth grade when we had to move, but they kept the place. My oldest sister lived there the most, but all three of my siblings and their familes had a turn living there. In fact when my parents and I had to move back to Scio, just before I started high school, all three of them and their families were living in the old house. That’s how we refered to it, ‘the old house’ because it was old, and it seemed so big when I was growing up.
Somewhere there are pictures, mom surely has them, but I don’t need them. That house is burned into my mind. It was two stories, four really big bedrooms upstairs with a hall landing that could have made another small bedroom. Actually, for a while, when I was six or seven it was my bedroom after my oldest sister got married and she and her husband moved in with us while they tried to find a place of their own. Downstairs was a living room with another bedroom off of it, a dinning room that had actual doors to close it off, an enormous kitchen with very little cupboard space and the bathroom. There was an enclosed back porch area that we called the utility room because that’s where the washer and dryer went and off of that was the creepy old wood shed that was almost as big as the downstairs part of the house. It had a very creepy room with a door that was almost a foot thick and it was always cold in there. We called that the fruit room because when we moved in there were jars and jars of old fruit preserves left from the previous owners. There was an open porch that wrapped around one side and the front of the house and it was mirrored by what we called the ‘veranda’ on the upper floor. There was a grape arbor that grew along the side of the woodshed. It had gone wild long before we moved in and no one ever took the bother to tame it. The grapes were dark purple and never did taste very good. The house itself sat on a plot of land that was about two and a half acres, just flat pasture land that we never really did anything with. We had cows every now and then, but that was about it. In the front yard there was a huge evergreen tree, and out at the edge of the yard by the road were two twin trees of some kind. One of them was my tree and in high school I could often be found sitting under it with a notebook and pen, or a book. In the back, just behind the house, was an old mulberry tree. The berries weren’t good for anything but making a mess on cars parked under it and feeding birds, who then made messes on cars parked anywhere on the property.
When we moved back to Scio the summer before I started high school my parents and I lived in camp trailers parked out back. There wasn’t room in the old house for us yet. I think my second oldest sister moved out first. I think that was the only time she’d had to move in there and it was the last time. My brother went next leaving my older sister and her family living upstairs and my parents and I downstairs. For a while I had a bed in the living room right under the stairs next to the closet. I could have actually put a bed in the closet because it was just big enough. Very Harry Potter. I would have liked that, because then I would have had a door to close and a little privacy. My mom didn’t like the idea however. So she let me move my bed into the dinning room. Right in front of the giant picture window…creepy. But at least I had doors to close. Not that it gave me privacy really. Anyone needing the bathroom had to pass through the dinning room to get to it. After my freshman year I moved back into the old camp trailer that had been mine. Dad parked it right along side the house and ran a power cord to it. I didn’t want to be in that house any more than I had to. Which was another reason I could be found under that tree as soon as the ground was dry enough to sit on. That was the summer Dad bought an old single wide trailer with two bedrooms and moved it onto the other side of the property. He could do that because the property was split into two tax lots. So a lot of work was done that summer. A drain field was dug, and pipes were laid so we could tap into the well for water. Electricity was laid in from the road and we even had a new address. It wasn’t the nicest of trailers, kind of ratty really, but I had my own room again. That made it a palace to me. I still didn’t have as much privacy as I felt I needed, but I had my own space and a door to close. Which my mother would promptly open to see what I was up to. I’m not sure if she was suspicious or if she was just nosey…okay, probably a little of the first and a whole lot of the second hehe.
So that’s where I grew up. That old house that I dream about even now. I dream about it often, always different dreams, but the house is a common element and either living there or having to move back there is usually a common theme. I always wake up from dreams like that feeling kind of out of whack, just a little off. I really hated that house.
When my parents finally sold the place in Scio I had already gotten married and moved out. I had sworn that no matter how bad things got I would never drag my family back to that place to live. When they sold it, though, I wanted desperately to buy it. I wanted to own the old home place….so I could burn that house to the ground. I had it all planned. I was going to donate the burning to the local fire department for practice, on the condition that I got to light the first match. I wanted to personally be responsible for it burning.
The new owners put in a new mobile home where our trailer had sat. Then they began to tear the old house down bit by bit. Storm and I drove by there this past summer and I took a couple of pictures on my phone. The property looks so small now that I’m older, it looks so different. But my child’s eyes could still see the shadow of that house sitting there. They didn’t get rid of it.
It’s weird really. I have a lot of really good memories of living there in Scio. Some of my best stories are from living in that old house. All of my best ghost stories, stories of my biggest crush, my first kiss, hilarious things about the nieces and nephews, my high school years…everything centered around that place in Scio. But a lot of my worst nightmares happened in that house, and it wasn’t just me. Things happened in that house that children should never have to experience. I think in a way I wanted it to burn to purge the bad memories, to clear the taint from the place, for all of us who have nightmares of living in that old house.
Because it is still there, it haunts my dreams and still calls me to come home.
