The Homes I Have Known

This is written in response to the StoryWorth prompt; Describe the places you’ve lived.

When I was born, my parents lived at 336 Knox Avenue in Dayton, Ohio. They rented this home and I don’t really remember anything about it, I know from pictures that it was a small house with brown shingle type siding, but I have no real memories of living there. I took my first steps there and likely uttered my first words there. I don’t remember it but I know that Dad and Mom lived there with me so I know that it was a wonderful home.


                                             

                                                                   336 Knox Avenue


By the time my brother was born nearly two years after me, Mom and Dad had bought a little house up the road at 320 Knox. I remember this house. It was a little white house. Mom says that when we first moved into the house, it was really just a shell of a house. It had no indoor facilities and had a single bedroom that you passed through to get from the living room into the kitchen. There was an unfinished upstairs/attic space.


                                       

                                        
  
                              320 Knox; Aunt Lola holding Kathy, Granny holding David


Mom says that David’s crib was next to the window and during the first winter he was born, snow blew through the cracks between the window and the window frame into his crib. Mom pinned a quilt to the side of his crib and Dad covered the window and its frame with plastic to keep David from being buried in snow.

Somehow, Dad found time between his multiple jobs, to work on that little shell of a house and make it into a little gem of a home. He added a bathroom and made a side porch into a bedroom for Mom and him just off of the kitchen. He put beautiful, polished knotty pine on the living room walls. My bedroom was a twin bed in the corner of the living room. Of course, he sealed it all tight and cozy and kept snowy weather at bay!


                                                                    

                                               

                                                                 Me in my bed in the corner.      

                                               
                                                     David and Uncle Billy in background.                                      

                                                 
                                                               Me, Uncle Johnnie, and David.

Even though that house at 320 Knox was really quite tiny, it seemed to be able to expand to fit the big hearts of Mom and Dad as several family members lived at various times in that little house with us. Dad would drive to Kentucky to pick up Mom’s brothers from the children’s home on their school breaks. They would stay with us. Grandpa, Boyd lived with us for a while around the time that David was born. Aunt Lola and her three children stayed with us for periods of time a few different times. When Uncle Bug and Aunt Alta moved from Knox Avenue to Calumet in the middle of the school year, Uncle Johnnie stayed with Mom and Dad so he could finish the school year at his old school.

It had a nice little yard which I believe was really two lots together so we had a nice side yard. Mom had a round flower bed in that side yard, I believe that it was edged with stones. Mom always had colorful zinnias and marigolds in that flower bed. There were also hens and chicks around the edges.
Two apple trees were directly in front of the house. These apple trees always had boocoodles of bagworms in their branches. I suppose those worms were the reason that we never got any apples to eat. My brother David did enjoy the harvest from those trees though. Mom would find Grandpa’s “empty” Prince Albert tins and “empty” pop bottles stuffed full of bagworms under David’s bed!

There was a dead tree a few feet outside the back door. It had no real branches and no greenery at all. It was almost like a bony finger pointing up to the sky. One year we got to enjoy seeing a woodpecker work diligently to carve out a little home for himself in that tree. It finally had a hole and could move in but a starling harassed the woodpecker until it packed its little bags and flew away.
There was an old concrete pad in the backyard. I suppose that there had once been an old garage or storage shed that no longer existed save for the remnants of its concrete floor. I think that Dad had an old Studebaker that sat on that concrete pad for a while. I suppose that he was working on it trying to get it in running condition.

I believe that there was a little garden spot at the back of the yard next to the fence between our house and the Webbs, our neighbors to the back. I remember a mulberry tree being in the fence row hanging over into our yard. I know that those mulberries had to have changed colors, but all I remember are long greenish-white berries hanging from that tree.

Just like the house, that yard knew the presence of many family members. So many children played, laughed, fussed…enjoyed life, in that yard under the watchful eyes of loving adults!


                                              
                                                             Aunt Lola, William, and me.

                                             
                                               Granny holding David; Kathy, me, and William. 



320 Knox Avenue may have been a tiny house, but it was a huuuge home!

When I was eight, we moved to a farm on the outskirts of Wartrace, Tennessee. The farm consisted of a small home on over 160 acres of land. The driveway up to the house passed right through a creek, not over the creek, through the creek. After heavy rains, we would have to drive through a little hayfield and pray that we didn’t get stuck in the mud. There were no neighbors fore or aft, just our farmland. Neighbors to the left and right were far enough away and obscured by enough vegetation to go unnoticed.


                                          
                                         
                                          Beth, Eric, and Olen Nolen in Wartrace drive.

The house itself was a small two-bedroom home with an eat-in kitchen, a living room, and a bath. All of the rooms were small. David and I shared a bedroom for several years. We had twin beds and shared a tiny closet. I cannot imagine how we both were able to use that tiny closet! Eventually, Dad would build onto the end of the house. He dug out a basement and built two bedrooms separated by the stairwell to the basement over it. I had my own bedroom. Dad put paneling on the walls in the new addition so the walls had a medium-dark wood-looking paneling. The new addition had oak hardwood floors but my bedroom had a big wall-to-wall carpet remnant in it. Each bedroom had a “walk-in” closet. The closets were much larger than the one in our shared bedroom, but they still were not huge.


                                           
                                               Eric Nolen napping in Wartrace living room


We had wall and baseboard heaters for heat in the winter and windows with screens that we could raise and lower hoping for a breeze in the summer. We had well water and we had to be very judicious in our use of water, particularly during dry spells in summer. One summer Aunt Fanny was visiting and we explained that we had to be very sparing with our water use. Well, Aunt Fanny’s concept of sparing wasn’t up to snuff as she ran the well dry brushing her teeth. I recall having to take sponge baths when the water was low. We sometimes had to walk down to the creek for a five-gallon bucket of water to flush the commode when the water was out.

I loved my bedroom. It wasn’t huge but it was a nice size and it was just mine. I had a nice stereo system in it and I can recall playing stacks of albums over and over; Queen, ELO, Boston, John Denver, Dan Fogelberg, Aerosmith… That bedroom was a little refuge where I could listen to music and the phone had a cord long enough so it would reach into my bedroom so I could talk with friends on the phone there.

Dad and Mom grew a big garden and we had to help in the garden. I am not a lover of the sun so I did not care for gardening which involved working outside in the bright sun. I much preferred breaking the beans under the shade to hoeing and harvesting them in the sun. We also had hay fields so in the summer, we all went out in the fields and lifted bales of hay onto the wagon as the tractor pulled it by. I always looked forward to unloading it in the shade of the barn but that wasn’t much better. The air in the barn was still, hot, and filled with hay dust that would stick in the sweat running down your body and itch like heck. I was so glad when Dad got his big round baler!

The farm had creeks to explore and hills and hollers to explore. I enjoyed walking in the woods or in the cool creek on occasion, but David took to the farm like a fish to water. He would explore the farm much of the time. He would go down and fish in the creek. Mom told him that there really weren’t fish in the creek for fishing but occasionally he would come back home with something bigger than a minnow. Dad would eventually build a pond back up in the holler behind the barn. David could spend hours back there.

It is nice to know that you own a few acres of land but I am just not a farmer. I know that I am likely a disappointment to my ancestors as the survival of their large families depended on what they could coax from the land and they did that without complaint. I guess that if I had to be a farmer, I could do it but it would be accompanied by more than a few grumbles.

Aside from dorms in college, the next place I lived was an apartment at Colony House Apartments in Murfreesboro, Tennessee. I got this apartment after I got my first job as a physical therapist at MTMC in Murfreesboro. It was a little two-bedroom, two-bath apartment and the pool was just a few yards away from the back patio. It was a single-level unit at the end of a string of two-level apartments. The dining area was a small space at the end of the living area. It had dark paneling on the wall between the dining “room” and kitchen. I loved my little apartment. I lived there when I married. Our first child, Roxanna came home to that apartment. She cut her first tooth there. It was around Christmas and I noticed that Roxanna’s little lip was bruised. While looking at it, I noticed a little tooth in her mouth. I suppose that she had bit her lip.


                                          

                                         
                           The Colony House Apartment; Uncle Ali holding Roxanna, Layla,
                                          AliReza, and Uncle Reza behind couch

Our apartment was an adequate place and we made many sweet memories there but Mohammad talked to me about buying a home so that we were investing in equity and not just paying rent. I wasn’t sure that we could afford to buy a home but we checked into it and it seemed that we could. We looked around and found our home at 579 Deerfield Drive, Murfreesboro, Tn.

It was a 1 ½ story Cape Cod type, brick house with a nice flat 100X200 foot yard. It had a nice kitchen, with what I saw of as so many cabinets that I was sure that some would remain empty! There was a big laundry room just off the kitchen. It had two nice size bedrooms with big walk-in closets. There was a hall bath with a big garden tub and a small master bath with a shower and no tub. There was a huge attic. After we had our three children, Mohammad finished the attic. He put two nice bedrooms with nice closets and raised part of the roof to make a shed dormer so there could be a huge bathroom. So, after he finished the upstairs, Alex and Roxanna moved out of the bedroom they shared with their brother, and Cammy had his own room downstairs.

 

                                                    Roxanna and Grandma Hajjafar.
 

                                                          Alex, Aunt Fali, and Roxanna.

                                                            Alex, Cammy, and Aunt Fali.


                                           
                                        Roxanna, Connie, Uncle David and a splot Cammy

                                 

                                           

                                                   Deerfield living room; Cammy and Alex.

                                            

                                                Uncle Ali and Alex in Deerfield kitchen.


I loved that house on Deerfield. It had a lovely yard and after we finished the upstairs, it was nearly perfect. The kids had friends who were neighbors and they could play outside with them to their hearts’ content. Also, Mom and Dad had bought a house in Murfreesboro, They still owned the farm but now lived in Murfreesboro just a couple miles away from us. We could see them often and the kids would take turns spending the night on the weekend with them. I can remember the kids arguing about whose turn it was to stay with Grandma and Papaw. Once when Roxanna was just a small child, she was out on an errand with Mom and Dad. They drove by our street during their driving. Roxanna piped up, “No, I don’t want to go back to 579 Deerfield Drive yet!” Every time I am with Mom driving by Deerfield, we will laugh and say “But I don’t want to go back to 579 Deerfield Drive!”


                                         
                                         

                                              
                                                        Uncle Reza , Roxanna, and me.
 

                                                     

                                                                 David and Roxanna,

                                                     
                                                                Alex and Mohammad.

                                      

                                             Alex, neighbor Melissa, and Cammy.


                                     
                                                     Roxanna, Alex and Mohammad.

                                                     
                                                        Alex, Cammy, Mohammad.


When we lived in Murfreesboro, Mohammad got into construction. His friend had invested in some land in Nashville and he was driving back and forth every day to work in Nashville. Sometime after I had Cameron, we decided that we could manage alright with me staying home with the kids. Since Mohammad was spending so much time on the road, we decided to move to Nashville so that he could be closer to his work. We bought a lot in Woodlands subdivision and he built a home for us.

We had made many sweet memories at our Deerfield home. The kids met their sweet Grandma Hajjafar and their sweet Aunt Fali while we lived there. We made many memories with family and friends in Murfreesboro, but we could take those memories with us as we made new memories in Nashville.

We enrolled the kids in schools in Nashville and since we didn’t want them to have to change schools in midyear, I drove them to their Nashville schools every morning and picked them up in the afternoon. We did that for a few months until we could move into our new house. They would each have their own bedrooms and Roxanna would have her own bath while Alex and Cammy would share a bathroom. We had nice-sized rooms and a full-size unfinished walkout basement with high ceilings. The basement ceilings were high enough to put a basketball goal in the basement.
Our house is on a small lot that slopes down from front to back with a road running behind our house and common areas to the left and right of us. If the common area was ours, you could say that our house is on the corner. The common areas and our backyard are full of trees. We have a good-sized screened-in deck on the back of the house. The deck is from 22-26 feet over the backyard. I love to sit out on the deck as when I sit and look out, I really see mainly trees and I can imagine that I am in the mountains. It is especially nice to sit out there in the evenings when a thunderstorm is blowing through.


                                        

                                        

                                         

                                         
                                         
                                         


So, there are descriptions of the places that I have lived. I would like to make an observation. Each time we moved, I thought that I would have empty cabinets. Always, I have ended up needing more cabinets! If I ever move again, I might need to look for a cabinetless kitchen so that I don’t grow to fit it! Another observation; the house isn’t important, rather it is who you live there with to make it a home that matters!
And after I have finished my story, I am struck by the thought; what if places I’ve lived means the locations where I have lived instead of the homes I’ve lived in?!
Oh well, my bad! I have probably described the locations when answering other questions anyway.