by DENISE DENTON THIERY
When I heard from a childhood friend that the house where my siblings and I grew up had been abandoned for many years and was in danger of being demolished, either by its own decay or with a bulldozer, I made the one-hour drive to the small midwestern town of Bethel, Ohio, hoping to get a last visit while it was still standing. I parked in front of the house, which was much smaller than I remembered, and was dismayed at its condition. It looked beyond repair.
Sweet memories flooded into my head about the years there. It was an old two-story house with a wide front porch. It was shaded by mature trees perfect for climbing. In the side yard was a hugely overgrown shrub, with a bare space in the middle, just big enough to climb into with a good book and be undisturbed.
The yard was bordered on one side by a stream where my four siblings and I waded and searched for tadpoles and fossils. Next to the stream was an old apple tree. After a long day, when the weather was nice, Mom and Dad would sit under the tree in the darkness, murmuring about the day, the glow of their cigarettes flickering in the darkness. Often Mom would burst into song, belting out "Don't sit under the apple tree with anyone else but me," (from the 1942 song sung by the Andrews Sisters), which always made Dad happy. My siblings and I were often in the yard or driveway with the neighborhood children, playing hide and seek, hopscotch, or high water/low water (a rope-jumping game).
On the other side of our house, the yard was bordered by a long gravel driveway, which ended in a small barn painted white.
Along the driveway was a sloped bank, where in the spring, hundreds of daffodils erupted in a patchwork shade of yellow, orange, and white. My mother would pick bouquets of them and go around the neighborhood knocking on doors and presenting them as gifts to the neighbors.
Morning glories climbed up the pillars of a small back porch, which was accessed through the kitchen.
There were five children in our house, four more in the house next door, and four more on the other side of our home. Across the street lived other children. We spent almost every day after school and on weekends playing outside.
It was a great place to grow up, if you didn't mind Edna, the resident ghost. Everyone in the family experienced eerie events. Lights went on and off by themselves, footsteps were heard when no one was there, pictures suddenly yellowed on the walls, and empty glass bottles sitting on the floor would suddenly get knocked over as if they were Edna's bowling pins. Some of these events could be blamed on the quirks of living in an older house, with ancient wiring, plumbing, and sloping floors.
Mom found out that the previous owner had inherited the house after his elderly relative, Edna, passed away there. Thereafter, whenever something weird happened in the house, we would yell, "Knock it off, Edna!" and it would stop. I like to think Edna was happy that our rambunctious family had taken over her home.
One day, my sister and her friend decided to take the short walk from school for lunch. It was only a few blocks. Mom was expected to be at work that day, but they knew there was ample food in the house. When they walked into the house, they clearly heard footsteps coming down the stairs from the bedrooms.
My sister said, "I guess Mom didn't go to work today." She opened the door at the foot of the steps, and the footsteps abruptly stopped. No one was there. Terrified, they ran all the way back to school. It was the last time they walked home for lunch. After a few years sharing our home with Edna, we got used to her antics, and they became part of our childhood memories.
As I sat in front of the house, decades later, I couldn't help wondering how Edna felt about the horrid condition of her (and our) former home. The posts that used to support the front porch were leaning precariously, and the porch looked as if it could collapse at any moment.
The windows were broken out, and there were large holes in the roof and walls. The trees we used to climb and the shrub where I used to sit in solitude and read were half-dead. The yard was vastly overgrown with tall weeds and scattered with trash. I took a couple of pictures and walked away, thinking it was my last glimpse of my childhood home.
A few months later, my childhood friend called and told me that the house was being rehabbed. I didn't dare believe it as I once again drove there to see for myself. To my surprise, there was a crew of rehabbers there, working hard to restore the home and prepare it for a new family.
I nervously knocked on the door and told the worker who answered that I'd grown up on the other side of the house and was happy to see it would be saved. He kindly offered to give me a tour. In many ways it resembled the home I'd remembered, but with new floors, freshly painted walls, and an up-to-date kitchen. The laundry room, which used to be at the back of the kitchen, has been moved to the basement. It had a new front porch, new windows, new shutters, and new doors.
They'd featured a second bathroom, which would have been a blessing for our family of seven back in the 1960s.
The yard was freshly cleared and mowed. Even though it was springtime, sadly, there was no sign of the beautiful bank of daffodils that used to adorn the driveway.
I drove back there one more time a few months later, when the house was finished, to take another picture of it. It's a charming little house. I was happy that my former home had been given a second chance, and I hoped that its new owners would love it as much as we had, and that they (and Edna) would adapt to each other, living in harmony and building a new set of memories.
Come to think of it again, since we're about to celebrate Halloween at the end of this month, Edna might have scared the pants off somebody, coaxing them to spend some "Cash" to refresh and beautify "Edna's Hangout!"