Across this country there are many times more small towns than big cities, and the bigger cities the fewer of them. Small towns are frequently surrounded by farms big and small, even if the they aren't called “farm communities.” In many of these towns, there are houses owned by people who have lived there longer than I have been alive. In some of these towns, the houses show their age less than you'd expect. In one of these towns, my family has lived for years. In one of those houses, my grandmother lived until I was in college. Looking at it, you'd guess it was older – maybe it's the attic windows, maybe it's the porch... My grandmother always kept a plethora of plants growing there. Walking in, the interior of the place would show the age, and some of the furnishings – the light was almost a chandelier, but in other aspects, the house never seemed to grow old – the carpet has been replaced, and didn't seem out of place, the drop ceiling in the kitchen seemed almost modern, and some of the light fixtures were less than five years old. True, the desk which was not a “centerpiece” but a prominent was almost antique, and there was an old, old, old TV – maybe from the '60s (of course it wasn't used, but covered by an old tablecloth and used only as a plant-stand). The couch was ancient, but the La-Z-Boy newer.
Oddly, the bed in the guestroom upstairs was newer than the one in the primary bedroom just off the living room on the main floor, and the basement was as old as the house, and looked it when you went down there.
Of all my memories of the second floor, they can be summed up in one sentence: a small door on the 2nd level led to the “attic” – the entire top level of the house. The word gives the impression of a small room, under the peak of the roof, or a closet type room – this was not the case at all. Un-insulated, yes, but given that, a place that was not uninviting to visit. If I close my eyes, I can still smell the odor of mildew and sawdust. Lest I give the wrong impression, it was a comforting and not at all unpleasant; strong, almost pungent, but it was – and is – incredibly familiar, welcoming. Pine wood floors and no cloth covering anything. If I said there was stacks of boxes, it would not be quite the right picture; “stores of treasure” would be more accurate – that's how the five year old remembers it, and the teenage version of me always felt younger there. Piles of old magazines – I distinctly remember Reader's Digest (others would have National Geographic, but not my grandma), dresses and clothes I never understood why they were kept, thick, 78 RPM records – nine inch black plastic LPs, and a portable player. Things I can't remember, but if I close my eyes, I can almost “see” stacked against the walls, and wooden beams holding up the exposed wood interior of the roof. In the center of the room was the hole in the floor which the stairs climbed thru, and there were two or three “paths” thru the junk piled here and there, on the east and the south leading to the windows looking out on the lawn. If you asked today, I couldn't tell you what the attraction was; if you asked me then, I would not been able to articulate it, other than it was grandma's.
It was one of my earliest memories of my attraction to windows; if I could've, I would've sat by any of those windows and stared down from a third floor height at the yard below, a big basswood tree and and old swing-set – sit and stare for hours, if I could. My whole life, I've had this fascination with looking out windows. It doesn't matter what I'm looking at – it doesn't matter if I'm looking at anything at all – I can lose myself for a timeless time...
I say I never understood why some of the junk there was kept – if it's possible that this is genetic, I inherited the same trait: it was impossible for my grandmother to throw anything out. For her, it was a learned trait – she grew up in the Depression; why I got it is beyond me.
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