Family Matters

The House That My Great-Grandfather Built

As I have done and will do several times this summer, I passed through my hometown this past week, staying with my brother and his new wife and visiting with my father and his new wife.  I grew up just outside a very small midwestern town.  In the pre-mall era of my youth, it was populated by family businesses that had thrived for three generations -- a sleepy town during a time in which an hour's drive made a major city a destination for only the most special of occasions.  My childhood memories are probably shared by thousands of midwesterners: two-mile bike rides into town to stop by the drugstore soda fountain, autumn streets lined with trucks of corn and soy beans headed for one of the four grain dealers found within a few blocks of each other, the annual Fall Festival featuring a ferris wheel and flying swings in the main intersection, a town Christmas tree which in December was permitted to replace the tank displayed outside the the small brick armoury.

My great-grandfather started one of those four grain-dealerships, and built his home about 100 years ago.  He walked the couple of blocks to his office every day into his 80s, until the afternoon he came home, announced that he was a little tired, sat down and died.  My great-grandmother lived about a decade longer and their home, with its astonishing nooks and crannies, bay windows and enormous porch, secret storage rooms and bedrooms mysteriously inaccessible except through other bedrooms, continued as the site of our family Christmas Eve gatherings. 

I suppose I was in middle school when my great-grandmother died and the house was cleaned out and sold.  As the town's businesses, including all four grain dealers, began to close, the older homes fell into disrepair and decay.  Hers passed through several owners, was turned into apartments of sorts, and showed signs of imminent collapse.  My brother and I could only hope that if it were ever demolished, someone would salvage the beautiful woodwork surrounding the fireplaces and marking the front stairs and entry to the parlor in which we had celebrated so many holidays.

Happily, someone purchased and began to restore the house a couple of years ago.  The exterior painting isn't quite finished, but new windows are in, the front porch looks inviting, and the future seems promising. I'm hoping that an opportunity to walk through the inside will present itself soon.  It would be a real pleasure to see that house brought back to life and turned into a family home again.

Walked: 3 miles.

Yesterday (Saturday 7/17): Day Off!

Friday 7/16: Walked 2 miles on the Art Loeb Trail in the Pisgah Forest.

Thursday 7/15: Walked 3 miles on the Graveyard Fields Trail off the Blue Ridge Parkway -- took me 2.5 hours!