Writing Exercise–My Childhood Home

My childhood home was demolished the summer when I was thirty three. Structures are temporary but memories are forever. Even if I become demented in my older days I still retain the first twenty-five years. So here are the earlier memories of my childhood home where I spent ages four through eighteen; the longest residence in my life thus far.
Mom has a gift of manifesting residences that fulfill her requirements through visualization and letting the Universe taking care of the rest; opening the opportunities of reality. We did not have much money; she was the sole provider the majority of the time; especially in my early years; Dad did not hold a steady job at that time. We had to move out of our house by the river that was a rental. We moved into a house on River Road just outside the city limits; formally known as Hueco Springs; German for yellow river.
We moved into a hundred and fifty year old structure that was a yellow house. Yellow has always been a theme in my life as water has been a theme in my life as well through the street names. Hueco Springs, River Road, Cane Street, Atwater, Yellow Jacket Lane and the current address, Golden Gate Road.
The original structure consisted of two rooms constructed of wooden-peg, an old style that (get the definition from Mom). There was a smokehouse as well that later served as a storeroom and utility room for our family. Our hallway was a dog run. The room on the left was my parent’s room. The room on the right was the living room with a vaulted ceiling. Throughout the years other rooms were added on and every doorframe was a different size. Anyone over 5’6” had to duck to enter the living room and bathroom. My uncle once walked into the bathroom without ducking his head and nearly knocked himself unconscious.
The house was owned by an air force Colonel that wanted a family on the premises to pay for the taxes as rent. Very reasonable price as his brother-in-law kept his cattle on the twenty five acres filled with mesquite and ancient oaks; another tax break.
Not only did I grow up with cattle, we had rabbits at one time that multiplied, well like rabbits. We butchered them and feasted on them as we had little money. What was considered a delicacy in France was our main staple for a modest income family. I remember the rabbits peeing on my head when I stubbornly walked under the cages. I remember my father hanging a butchering apparatus in the tree and slicing the body down the middle and spreading the carcass; scooping out the innards into a bucket. I held the colon and squeezed out the round pebbles of poop that resembled my favorite cereal, Coco Puffs. I was fascinated by their anatomy rather than frightened our horrified.
There was one particular rabbit that I was fond of. The black one with the white foot. We later cut off the foot and kept it as a good luck token along with a few other lucky feet from a brown rabbit. Morbid most people would consider our way of life. Normal for me. Each time we would sit down at the dinner table I would curiously inquire, “Is this the black rabbit with the white feet?” Then I would squeeze ketchup onto the dry gangly, meat. Mom didn’t prepare the succulent Julia Child French version. There wasn’t enough time nor resources.
The farm also housed chickens in a chicken coop, at one time a turkey named Henry, goats, Red Nanny was my nemesis. A cranky ol gal that knocked me off the trailer once when we were playing King of the Mountain. I still have the scar among many on my legs to comemorate that incident. Probably not the smartest idea to wear tap shoes surrounded by cinder blocks.
I witnessed my first birth as Red Nanny squatted and moaned and a little goat surrounded in a fetus sac fell to the ground. It resembled a balloon. I was well aware of how life began, babies were born, and the birth process all at the age of five.
At one point we had a horse named Token. An unruly, spirited horse that my mom attempted to tame. I was led by a rope on Token to the second pasture and we would visit with Marvin, an older man that was exactly seventy years my senior as we shared the same birthday.
He was a widower and was some relation to the Colonel’s family. He had a pear tree that created a plethora of pears that dropped to the ground. We had sacs of pears that would be transformed into pear pie. A favorite dessert my mom still prepares thirty years after her first attempts.
Across the street were the untouchable Borchers. They were wealthy and their house was on a luscious green hill sheltered by an expensive fence. She was a lawyer, he was a successful rancher. I never saw the couple in all of my eighteen years. I gave up my fascination quickly as I peered across the street with binoculars trying to glimpse into a wealthy life that was so within my reach; compared to the modest life that was I lived.
The property was canopied by hundred year live oaks with ball moss and the seasonal army worms that invaded every square inch in the spring time; drooping down on silken threads and making a mess as they hit the ground.
There was a Carolina jasmine that served as a clubhouse with yellow blossoms that lived even throughout the winter. Behind the jasmine was a windmill and beside it a water tank that held a coffee can on a wire. I always knew a storm was coming or a Northern cold front by the sound of the coffee can clinking on the water tank. What soothing sounds the rain droplets that danced on the tin roof; which later I was closer to then Heaven in my loft my father built when I was all of nine.
That summer I babysat my brother as Mom and Dad floated sheetrock. We bounced on the trampoline and I entertained him throughout many days. I was paid six dollars for the entire summer and scoffed at the financial compensation even though I was jumping on a new trampoline and inherited the coolest loft with built in book shelves, a closet with a hobbit door that opened to the attic. My room also had a cathedral ceiling and the signature of my father’s brilliant carpentry. It just saddens me when I learned that a bulldozer destroyed my child hood home only to leave the smoke-house storeroom.