7-7-09...Home Where The Heart is
To me the house that I grew up in was a Palace. My Mama and Daddy were the King and Queen. I was the Princess, and Norman was a Prince. I never saw the cracks in the wall or the rotting boards on the back porch and steps where I played. I thought the linoleum almost floating off the floor when the wind blew hard as a magic carpet and it was magical to me. I would walk back and forth on it as it came up around me. I thought it was a special thing just for me to enjoy. I loved watching the plastic curtains on the windows blow out from the wall and seem to float around.
The house had high ceilings which made it cooler in the summer but colder in the winter. When I was very young the bedrooms had no heat so they were closed off and just the front room and kitchen had any heat. That was just a little open heater with a flame that came up out of each burner. The back was asbestos then there were stone burners in front of each flame that heated up. You still could only get heat if your were very close. I used to stand very close when Mama and Daddy were not looking. So close the backs of my legs would be red from the heat. Mama jerked me away one day when she caught me and she said she smelled my hair singing in the heat. My hair was long and kinky and if it was kinked from the heat it didn't show but Mama was convinced that it had burned. From then on I was threatened fiercely if I ever stood that close again. I don't remember ever doing so either. Mama could make a believer out of me when it was necessary and it was certainly necessary then. Later on there was one of the same kind of stoves in the back room that gave us some heat in the bedrooms.
The roof was sheet iron. Which was only a thin piece of tin that rusted and had to be painted with silver paint of some kind when my Daddy could afford to have it done. That roof was magical to me also when it rained. I loved to hear rain beating down on that roof especially at night when I was snug in bed. Such a peaceful and comforting sound. Made me feel protected inside and I would think of the people who may be out in the rain and didn't have my house and bed to snuggle in. I felt sorry for those who didn't have what I had.
The house sat high off the ground on concrete blocks. No foundation, no under pining. We would crawl under there in the summer and play in the dirt making mud pies and digging in the sofr earth. In the winter Daddy kept potatoes and onions under the back side where it was a little lower to the ground. When he dug them from his garden they were laid out on the ground under a tree where it was shaded. Something was poured over them while they 'cured out'. Then in the fall when it got cold they were put under the house. They didn't freeze or rot. My job was to crawl under there with a paper sack and bring some in the house for Mama to cook.
The house was surrounded with trees for shade. Most of them were china berry and walnut trees. One big Elm tree over by the tracks was where I climbed and played.
I grew up thinking I had everything and I still think that. That house holds many happy memories for me and it was home from the time I was two years old until I got married and left the first time. It will always be my home. No matter how old I get. As long as I live on this Earth that will be the home of my heart and soul. In my heart The King and Queen, Prince and Princess still live there. The house is still like it was then in my heart and nothing will replace that home until I leave this earth and go to my Heavenly Home. That was my only real home here on Earth!!!
