I’ve come to realize that the time through which we pass isn’t a straight line. Rather, it is circular; and if you live long enough, you re-experience time past in your mind.
Our old Irvington home at 312 N. Ritter Ave. is for sale. Seeing pictures of it has taken me back fifty years, rekindled my affection for the dear old place and caused me to delve into the trunk in my mental attic that’s labeled “Ritter Ave.” Bill, Vicki and I have had several chats about our various experiences there.
We paid $11,500 for it with $500 cash thrown in to replace the dangerously rickety basement stairs. Rather than hiring someone, Bill built the stairs himself which cost a lot less than $500!
Needless to say, the house is worth many times what we paid for it, considering the rise in home values, the popularity of Irvington which is a “hot” market and the wonderful updates done by the people who bought it thirty years ago. They replaced the antique steam boiler with a modern furnace and air conditioning and built on a mother-in-law quarters and added pretty wallpaper, lovely landscaping and more.
We decided not to ask to visit the house. Thomas Wolfe wrote a novel, You Can’t Go Home Again; we concluded that that’s the way we feel about this place that was so important in our lives.
The current “Indianapolis Monthly” has an article about a home in Fort Wayne that the master architect, Frank Lloyd Wright, designed. Bill and I visited it several years ago. Wright personally designed the home for the original owners. It was what he called a Usonian house because it was planned for people of rather modest means and was smaller than his other homes. I love Wright’s architecture and lusted for that house. Wright’s houses are more than just houses; they are works of art.
The article was written by a man whose family lived in it when he was a teenager. His words resonate with me because I share some of his feelings. He came to feel that the house owned and shaped him. He cried when his parents sold it, and I understand that.
The Ferguson family owned the house on Ritter. We bought it after the death of John Ferguson who had been a greatly beloved minister at Irvington Presbyterian. The first time we saw it, a man was throwing boxes of letters, magazines, memorabilia and what-not out the attic window down into a truck parked in the driveway.
I visited old Mrs. Ferguson and her identical twin sister at a nearby nursing home. They resembled the illustration of Tweedledee and Tweedledumb in Alice and Wonderland! Dr. Ferguson and they were the children of missionaries and had grown up near the Great Wall in China. Oh how I wished that we’d asked for permission to go through the stuff in the attic that was thrown away! There were probably treasures that historians would have cherished.
Fifteen years later, the Presbyterians celebrated an anniversary of the church and asked us to have the house on a homes tour. Even though it had been so long since his death, visitors told stories about how the charismatic Dr. Ferguson would impulsively invite people from the congregation to come home with them after church to Sunday dinner after which he played his baby grand piano in the foyer. Someone said, “Poor Mrs. Ferguson never knew how many to plan Sunday dinner for!”
Although every home contains a history of sad and frustrating times, I think of that house as a happy house. Nancy, an acquaintance who is Vicki’s age, grew up a couple of blocks away. She wrote a note about her memories when she saw the real estate information. After all these years, she still remembers a Halloween party in the attic and the cubby hole in Vicki’s bedroom. A home is more than boards and bricks . . . More to come. wclarke@comcast.net