Our ranch-style house is certainly much more suitable to our time of life than the 2½ story, 1902 house on Ritter was. It has an attached garage, no stairs, attic or basement and is easier to clean and maintain. It’s on three quarters of an acre, and we have several mature trees, including magnificent oaks. The view from the floor-to-ceiling greenhouse window changes every hour and brings us close to nature and the day-to-day activity of squirrels and birds. Sunsets and snowy days are lovely.
However, no house can have the place in my heart that the house where I grew up in Knightstown or 312 N. Ritter have. As my nephew, John Jones, wrote, “The bricks, mortar and stout timbers of a home build the strongest trunks in which to store memories.”
Ritter Ave. was the home to which we took toddler Vicki and from which we buried a baby. The attic was wonderful for Halloween parties. Kathy Tindall played a witch. She had a delicious cackle and came out of the storage room to the shrieks and screams of the kids. Irvington’s beloved Imogene Jones dressed up as a gypsy and told fortunes during a party for teenagers.
This was the house where the sewer backed up two days before a dozen friends were to arrive for brunch to be followed by a surprise birthday party for Bill to which I had invited 125 people. It was a marvelous Christmas house to which our mothers often came for Christmas, and where we were young together. I left behind my neighborhood, my dear neighbors of nearly 20 years, and Mother’s bloodroot that she had given to Bill; and I cried at the closing.
We had outgrown the half of a double we were renting and decided to buy “our very own home.” It was a charmer: an American four-square — four rooms down and four rooms up — with big rooms, two fireplaces, two window seats, hardwoods, and natural woodwork. Not so charming were the kitchen whose sink hung from the wall and faded wallpaper. “You understand, Rose Mary, we won’t be able to hire help. We’ll have to do everything ourselves.” In love with the house, I burbled, “Oh yes — I don’t have any experience, but I’m willing to learn!” (I had never held a paintbrush in my life!)
This was in the old days of Caveat Emptor — Let the buyer beware! However, the bank where we were to close insisted that the Realtor tell us two hours before closing that someone had broken into the house days before and broke off a water faucet upstairs so that water had run all over the house. The Realtor had a crew sanding the floors and installing cheap metal cabinets in the kitchen. He said, “It’ll be a better house than it was before!”
It took weeks of hard labor, using a steamer and chipping away with a razor blade, to remove several layers paint-soaked wallpaper. The downstairs woodwork had to be stripped and refinished because of the boiling water that the steamer dripped on it. Bill discovered that I’m a klutz. “Rose Mary, I’ve counted six paint drips on this wall!” My lot became such things as the dull chore of filling cracks in the plaster.
We got through that first year with a minimum of bickering. Now, however, it was time to tackle major remodeling jobs. First, as a sort of hors d’oeuvre that might have left Bill hors de combat, he decided to paint the topmost trim of the three-story house. My job was to stand on the bottom rung of the tall ladder in which he had invested and brace it. I was certain that I was going to be a widow by evening. Bill looked down. “Rose Mary, are you crying?” “Yes,” I snuffled. “Well how do you think that makes me feel? Stop it right now!” That wasn’t the last time that I shed tears during our projects. wclarke@comcast.net