Sometimes when I can't sleep at night and I turn the TV off, I lay there and mentally walk through my childhood home remembering every detail. Usually I don't get past the bathroom before I fall asleep so I am going to try to get through the whole house now.
When first entering the house, you walked into the kitchen. The kitchen with the ugliest floor tile even made. The floors were white and each tile had a different picture on it. Some were old fashioned cars, symbols resembling the Atari symbol, and women dressed in old fashioned clothes. Possibly from the circa Little House on the Prairie.
We had a wrap-around counter that you could stand behind. We always kept a cutting board on the end because my mother burned it. She forgot to put water in the pressure cooker before making potatoes. There was an opening for the washer and dryer. There was ledge above them where Matt used to hide my favorite crayon, bittersweet. (This is the highlight of an earlier post.) Above the washer dryer were cabinets. They were covered with wallpaper meant to make them look oak. It didn't do a very good job. In one of those cupboards was the ugly green, plastic cookie jar with the gold flower on it. It was there that we kept the generic Oreos which we were seldom allowed to eat.
There was a white shelf on the wall where we kept an electric kettle which was probably the first model ever made and the metal toaster that I would use as a mirror before school.
There was a tiny step and then you were in the dining room. When we were younger, there was a black wood burning stove but that was removed when we were older. Part of the counter wrapped into the dining room. On the bottom of the counter were sliding door cabinets and then a big black heater. We kept hats and mittens in those cabinets, and we hung our wet hats and mittens on that heater. The cabinets were covered again with the ugliest wallpaper ever. It was light blue with pictures on it. I can't seem to recall what the pictures were, however, I do remember it was awful.
We had a tin picture of The Last Supper on the wall. There was also a wall with a wall hutch on it. My mother had four copper balls on it along with a sign that said “Think.” I never really understood the purpose of the sign but I never questioned it. The floor tile was meant to resemble brown bricks. Not as bad as the kitchen floor, but not great either. Past the kitchen table was a closet. We kept cereal, instant oatmeal and Pop Tarts in the closet.
The bathroom was next. I don't remember the original bathroom because my parents had it redone when I was young. The new bathroom had a shower with sliding glass shower doors. There was a large medicine cabinet with three mirrors that all opened. We had three ball lights above the medicine cabinet. The sink was big and brand new.
The next room was the den. The den changed several times. Unfortunately the wallpaper did not. It was patchwork with different colors and designs. We always had a couch in there. There was one point where we had several pieces of furniture in there. Sometimes, when all the kids watched TV together, we played “switch.” You would change seats with the person on your left every time a commercial came on.
We had a bureau in there with five drawers. Each kid got one drawer to keep their things. Matt was on the top and it went in order of age. We had a wooden gray table in there which we called “the gray table.” There was a bookshelf in there with grown up books on it and a small bookshelf on top which held our “Early I Can Read” books. Stone Soup was my favorite. One day Meghan decided to use permanent marker on the three shelves and wrote “Matt, Jeremy, and Kelli” on the three shelves. Matt, Jeremy, and I were accused until Neil went in each kids bureau drawer to find papers to match the handwriting. We were exonerated.
There was one closet in the den where my mother kept the vacuum and all of our board games.
My parent's room was off the den. It was a typical bedroom: bureaus, night stand, a TV, and my parent's waterbed. (I inherited that when I got my first apartment)
There was a second door in my parents room. When you opened it the stairs were right there to go up to our bedrooms then you walked into the living room.
When we were younger, we had a big fake fire place that really worked. It was a fake flame but it was warm. It was a typical living room. Couch and recliner. There were bookshelves behind the recliner. These were the books that we tore the blank pages out of the beginning and end for writing and drawing. We had a big picture window in the living room. During the days of the “sniper,” we were told not to stand in front of the window. This is when someone was shooting in the windows of random houses. My mother had a coo-coo clock on the wall but as the years went on, it stopped coo-cooing. Also hanging on the wall was another wall hutch with my mother's cherished Hummels.
The stairs leading up to our bedroom were covered with an ugly, yellow, plastic cover. It covered the brand new carpets that were installed when the upstairs was renovated. When coming down the stairs at the bottom was a ledge. We would run down the stairs and grab the ledge, let our legs fly up in the air and jump. At the top of the stairs was a hallway. When we got older and got our own phone number, we put the phone in the hallway on a parson's table. The bathroom was in between the two bedrooms. It was a half bath and never was renovated. It was an ugly mint green and usually a mess.
Matt, Jeremy, and Ian's room was on the left. They had the bigger room. Brown paneling and blue carpeting. The only TV with cable was in their room because it was bigger. For years, they all had Star Wars bedspreads. In both of the bedrooms were eves. Not sure if that it what they are really called though. You could take the door off and store things in them. I'm not sure what was in the eves in the boy's room but I know mine held the Halloween costumes. They had a small closet and a wooden, homemade toy box painted blue.
In my room there was white paneling and red carpets. I had a huge walk in closet and my bureau was built into the wall. When I was young I had a regular single bed. When Meghan slept over we took her roll-a-way bed out of the closet. When my parent's got their waterbed, we inherited their double bed and Meghan and I shared that. When I was older, they bought me a daybed with a trundle bed underneath for Meghan. That was my bed until I got my mother's waterbed. I had a cheesy black and white TV with no cable on it and a little white desk.
Last but not least is the basement. The basement, like other rooms in the house, changed over the years. When we were young, it was a playroom for us. We had my parent's old stereo with the eight track player. We had their old eight tracks and knew all of the words to Mrs. Robinson. When Matt got older, it became his room. He was lucky. He could get out of the bulkhead whenever he wanted without anyone knowing. After he moved out I used his trick and slept down there on nights I knew I wanted to sneak out. The other side of the basement was the boilers and sewer. I used to roller skate down there.
I finally made it through the whole mental walk through and I am still awake.
