Until this past Sunday, it had been 31 years since I had seen the inside of the house I grew up in. It’s not that I suddenly knocked on the door and asked for a tour. Rather, it’s because in August, the house was apparently put up for sale again and Zillow, bless its heart, still has the listing.
As a child, you remember your house differently than you view it as an adult. As a child, the house seemed huge. But now I see that it was only 1,750 square feet. That’s small by today’s standards (our rental is 1,900 sq ft), especially when you consider that six of us lived in this space – four boys and my mom and dad.
Looking through the photos, I can see how some things have changed tremendously while others are still relatively untouched by the passage of time. The kitchen, of course, has been totally redone. There are new counters, cabinets and appliances. A refrigerator stands where the double-doored oven once served up dinner; resting on top of an all-too-small-for-this-home water heater.
Somewhere along the line, the house lost a bedroom. Not sure how that happened, but there were definitely four of them when I was a kid. I would like to think that they merged Jeff’s room with the master, but that would be a really weird room, really, really long but only wide enough for a queen and two nightstands.
The living room is somewhat disguised now. They covered the brickwork with a shelving unit across much of hearth. It’s nice to see that the brickwork where I used to wedge sticks in so my army men could conduct mountain terrain missions, is still there. The fireplace is now an insert, so Santa must have a heck of a time dropping in this time of year.
It’s also nice to see that the amazing custom louvers are still there. Above, the 2×4 that my brothers and I used to do pull-ups on, and when my parents weren’t around, we swung from it like we were in the Olympics.
You’d think that if they had removed Jeff’s room that they would have enlarged the master bath. But looking at the photos, it’s just as teeny-tiny as it’s always been. I can still picture me shaving in that room, my dad removing the blade from his Gillette so I could shave safely. Sadly, I can also picture me cowering in the corner of the bathroom near the tub when my mom decided it was time for an enema.
It would have been a ton of fun to take a tour of the home while it was for sale. I wouldn’t have purchased it by any stretch, that’s just a little too nostalgic for me. Plus, I know where all the bodies are buried – literally.
I could have showed the agent where my hamsters were buried as well as the Civil War men, a couple dead birds and cats, and I could also show them where we dug the holes for the dirty oil that came out of the 10 cars in the yard. Not very PC these days, but we didn’t know any better back then.
There were a few surprises to see in the house all these years later. The playroom and the back bedrooms, including mine, still have the white acoustic tile for ceilings. I just know these are filled with asbestos, so I’m not sure I would have taken them down either. Still, it would be fun to point to them and show the agent which holes I had added to them, tons of tack and hooks to support my airborne fleet of model airplanes. I might also let the agent know about the now covered up mural in my room – painted by family friend Rich Roy – of a parachutist, a plane and a funny car. I didn’t really want the funny car. But Rich was into them, so it was the cost of getting the mural I wanted.
I could have also let the agent know about all the “blue” sayings that were colored onto the walls of the back bathroom, including lots of stuff from Laugh In, various Beatles lyrics and my middle school locker combinations.
Though my room is very conservative in its off-white painted state (I lost my virginity in that room), the playroom is still largely the same. This was the coolest part of the house, 400 square feet, almost a quarter of the space, dedicated to us kids and our endless play. The room is no longer orange and the brickwork has lost its mortar – it used to be gooshed out between the bricks – but the planters are still there as is the floor, which was crap even even when we lived there. I guess rollerskating, occasional small fires, gallons of water, throwing darts at each other’s feet and general wear and tear will do that to linoleum. Still, you’d think it would have been replaced in the intervening three decades since the Zerrs moved out.
While the photos will never tell me where the hot water heater moved to or whether anyone every fixed the rusty water problem in the back bathroom, it’s still nice to see pictures of the old homestead.
Of course, it’s no longer home. As you grow older, you come to realize that your home is held in your heart. It’s not a place of bricks and boards. While I can readily see the changes, I can also see my one time home as I like to remember it; an endless place of adventure and fun, of safety and security, of good times and bad; memories that exist beyond the passage of time and changes in decor.
It will always be the place I grew up in. But home? No. It’s someone else’s house now. I took my home with me. It’s with me right now, in my rental in Shoreline, which has just one or two artifacts from my house in Renton. I’m good with that, though I would have loved to have punked a real estate agent by showing interest in this house when it was for sale in August. It would have been so much fun to ask all sorts of seemingly odd questions about it that only my brothers and I would know the answers to.
In the Emerald City, home again,
– Robb