Time Travel

I've been time traveling tonight. I couldn't sleep, so I decided to visit 110 West American Avenue, Murray, Utah, as it was in 1970. You see, one of my great gifts is a most amazing memory. As I was trying to sleep, I decided to play mind games. I read once of a girl who was kidnapped and was buried underground for three days. She kept her sanity by picturing in her mind her family decorating and taking down their traditional Christmas tree. She would take out each ornament in her hand, look over it, consider memories, etc. She repeated this exercise again and again. Psychiatrists later told her that exercise was what kept her from going insane during those days of darkness. The mind is a wonderful thing, isn't it? Anyway, I often use such exercises to help me fall asleep. I will decorate a room or picture myself in a garden. But I digress...

Tonight I decided to visit my childhood home. I haven't lived there since 1976, when we moved in February of my senior year of high school. We had moved into the house when I was four years old, so my childhood was spent there and my personality formed by many experiences in that house.

Tonight I entered the living room as it was when I was twelve years of age. The house was a small house, perhaps 900 sf. It had three bedrooms, 1 1/2 baths, no family room or den. There was no basement, just a crawl space under the house for the furnace and plumbing. There was no entry way. When you entered, you were in! The front door was a wood slab door, with a white screen door covering that. In those days, houses had screen doors. It was a must. Central air conditioning was unknown in my neighborhood and even swamp coolers were rare. The screen door allowed a breeze to come through on hot summer evenings. Our house had a southern exposure, so leaving the wood door open during the day wasn't an option.

My mother loved that screen door. I remember her excitement when we got it. The door was one of the few touches that she had been able to add to the house. Most screen doors were a plain steel gray, with the fancier ones having a wrought iron family Monogram in the center. Our screen door was unique. It was a white door, similar to a country barn door on the bottom, with a "x" shape stamped in the metal. The top half had a scalloped edge around the screen. The screen was removable and was replaced with glass when the seasons turned cold. The door introduced my mother's Early American theme.

My mother favored Early American decor and our living room furniture reflected it. She had a curio cabinet that hung on the wall that was made of light maple. It had a clock and shelves to put knick knacks on. There was a single sofa, no love seat, and a wood rocking chair. Most of our playing and TV watching was done from the floor. Luckily, the living room was carpeted. In fact, the living room and my parent's bedroom were the only rooms in the house that had "wall to wall" carpet, such a luxury in those days. We had a huge wood stereo on the east end of the living room. It was very different from the sound systems that people have now. The turntable that played lp's was in the middle and you opened a huge wood cover to reach into an area to put on records. The speakers were on each end and an area to store lp's was between them. Our "color TV" was at the other end of the living room. Again, the style at the time was to encase the TV in a huge wooden cabinet. It was such a big deal to have a color TV, and I was one of the last of the kids my age to get one. There was a tiny closet for coats that was perpendicular to the front door. If the front door was open, you could not get to the closet...not very conducive for entertaining.

As a sign of the poor architecture of our tract house, our bathroom was a straight view from the front door. The was not very convenient if you were finishing up makeup or hair when a date came to pick you up. It was a simple bathroom, with a tub, medicine cabinet on the wall, and space in one corner where we had a wooden rack that my mother hung hand washables on.

Our bedrooms had vinyl flooring, not tile; but a solid sheet of vinyl with a horrendous, huge raised floral design on it. I believe it was sort of a mauvish-gray color. I remember my sisters and I used to rub crayons over paper to copy the design. I can't imagine how hard the floor would have been to keep clean. However, it was rarely cleaned, as my mother struggled with housekeeping. Therefore, it must have been truly filthy.

My parent's bedroom was off of the living room. My mother kept a huge, blue trunk at the end of her bed. It was filled with mementos of her past. She bordered on being miserly with her memories. It was a rare instance when she opened her trunk and allowed us to see the bounty within. Among other treasures, there were pictures of my father in his sailor's uniform, her high school yearbooks, a china teapot, etc. One of my favorite was a large, blue blanket that smelled of dust. I have no idea where it came from. I seem to recall that she told me her sister had made it; but I don't see how since it was a woven blanket. But it was very heavy. Once when I was sick and running a fever, she took the blanket out of the trunk and covered me with it. I loved the feeling of the heavy cover. It felt safe somehow. To this day, I rarely can sleep without a cover of some sort. I remember asking her other times if I could use it, but she usually said no.

Off of my parent's bedroom was a bath with a shower. It was the only shower in the house, as the main bathroom only had a tub. I only remembering showering in it a few times because the plumbing never seemed to be working, and often the room ended up as a junk room of sorts. But I do remember thinking, as a child, that showering was SO exotic! It was much more fun that even a bubble bath because you could pretend you were singing in the rain.

Adjoining that bathroom and the kitchen was the "utility" room. The washer and dryer were housed there, along with the water heater. The back porch was off of the utility room, with a much less ornate screen door.

Okay. It is now almost 1:00 a.m. And my memories keep flowing. And I haven't even gotten to the heart of our house; the kitchen. I will leave it for another time. As I begin to recall these things, I really could make this much more detailed with colors and scents and textures. But I have no idea how large of a post we are allowed to write.

But I will say that if you drive past that little house, which is still there on American Avenue, you will be in awe that a family could raise five girls in such a little house with only one working bathroom!