Our House

The big old farmhouse sat up the lane off the winding country road. It was far from modern and would never qualify for a spread in House Beautiful, but it was a magnet for family, neighbors, and friends. Our house was the center of the universe when I was a kid.

Sunday afternoons were lazy and seemed to be the time that everybody came to visit. Part of this was because my maternal grandmother lived with us. And did she have the connections! There were cousins, old neighbors, former classmates, former students, and often my aunt and uncle. At times there would be three conversation centers – the living room, the dining room and, in good weather, the back porch. Somehow the men always ended up on the back porch or under the large maple tree that guarded the end of the clothesline. I thought this happened in all families, but later on I figured it out that we were different. None of the neighbors had this much company.

There were older ladies with white hair and purple hair and cheeks as red as beets, their hair in a bun or braids wound and pinned close to their heads. Rimless octagonal glasses were the choice of the retired teacher. None of the women wore slacks; some wore flowered print dresses that would have made great drapes for the Holiday Inn. Others wore “house dresses,” and their shoes were black, tied oxfords with a slight heel. Even in the hottest weather none of these visitors appeared in shorts.

The men wore clean work clothes. Blue chambray shirts were most often the Sunday afternoon dress of the old guys. Either bright green or red suspenders kept their pants in suspense. All this was topped off with straw hats, often with a green plastic inset on the front of the brim.

Besides the visitors on Sundays, we always had people coming to get milk. It was self-serve. They got as many gallons as they needed and left the money in the coffee can on the shelf in the corner. Buyers could even make change if they needed to. Some of these customers eventually became part of the neighborly exchange.

Saturdays were my mother’s baking day, and she always planned extra goodies for the Sunday visitors. Beginning early in the morning there would be a profusion of aromas coming from the kitchen.

When we came in from doing our morning barn chores, there were homemade bread, thick fruit pies with juice dripping from the edge, and lemon or banana cream pies with mile-high meringue, all lined up on the counter as if they were going to be judged at the county fair. Sometimes Mom baked cinnamon rolls oozing with sticky goo, topped with smooth white glaze and sprinkled with chopped nuts. No wonder so many people liked to stop at our house.

I can remember when one of my friends came into the kitchen and saw the bread rising in an old round aluminum roaster sitting atop the Hoosier cabinet. It had raised the lid in the process, and he called to my mother, “Ma’am, your bread is overflowing.” The bread would be formed into large loaves baked in a pie pan or a traditional loaf pan. The bread was famous and delicious, although I asked my mother to buy white “doughy” bread for my school lunch sandwiches so the kids wouldn’t tease me. None of the visitors at our house ever seemed to mind that the bread was homemade, especially when it was topped with freshly churned butter and newly cooked berry jam.

The ladies in the flowered dresses taught me how to play lots of exciting games: Monopoly, Touring, checkers, assorted card games. The battles of these games got heavy at times, and I learned about winning and losing. It was valuable training for getting along in the working world. The mustached old guys tried to teach me how to carve a bird from a piece of sweet perfumed pine, but a bloody finger made that a short-lived hobby. A fellow with a Barlow told me I’d better stick to some other pastime, like reading a book. The flying penknife of mumblety-peg was easier if the players wore shoes since the penknife that stuck in the ground closest to the foot was the winner. Ouch.

On special holidays we would set up long tables that spanned the dining room through the living room. The tables were covered with my mother’s best linen tablecloths, and out came the good china and silverware. Every mismatched chair in the house was placed around the table to accommodate all the hungry aunts, uncles, and cousins, and a special table was set up for the kids. I couldn’t wait to get to the adult table, but when I finally got there I thought, “What’s so great about this?” In later years, I volunteered to sit at the kids’ table. Adults talked too much about politics and illnesses.

After the feast was over, the men sat around the table while the women began to clean up. The silverware always had to be counted when put back into the red-felt-lined wooden chest. I always wondered if Gram feared that a relative would try to take some.

We didn’t know what a family room was; our dining room table was the center of family life. It was a place to do homework, play games, and entertain. Since it connected to the living room, we could easily talk with Mom, Dad, and Gram. I can still see Nipper, the RCA Victor radio dog, on the front of the radio dial as we listened to “The Lone Ranger” and “Hopalong Cassidy” in the dining room just before supper. When I finally saw these cowboys on TV, I told my mother, “That’s not what they look like.

Growing up in this friendly house allowed me to intimately understand the great give and take of idle conversation; we knew about everybody’s comings and goings, their problems and their triumphs. I learned how to listen to everyone and to ask my own questions. I didn’t always get all the nuances of the conversation because some subjects were off limits to kids my age. When I asked a question that was over the edge, the adults would tell me they didn’t want to talk about it anymore. I never pushed it.

All this took place in a house that didn’t have a bathroom until I was six. But that didn’t keep any of the people from coming to see us. In 1929 my grandmother had been invited to this house for a community square dance. The living room and dining room, which are separated by a massive arch, are each large enough to accommodate a square. She said when she came there to dance, she never thought she would live there someday. I can visualize the fiddle, guitar, and upright bass playing music for

the dance. I never realized how large the house was until I lived in an apartment in college.

Maybe the walls can still hear the strains of “Turkey in the Straw” and beckon the multitudes to stop by to share the bread and trade one more story.

Keith Neill is a retired high school teacher. In 2009 when he attended LVW’s Book Fair, he met the Monroeville Lifestory Writers. He now writes with them and also facilitates a Lifestory writing group in New Stanton.