March 1, 2000
CYBERCOLUMN:
Not just a house––a home
___The old house, built in 1921, sat crookedly atop short mesquite posts and a small hill right outside of Three Rivers, Texas. The walls were board and batten, a common style for houses built years ago. Up until the 1980s, it had no plumbing other than a single faucet protruding over the sink in the kitchen. Baths were an adventure for visiting children, taken in a No. 3 tub in the middle of the kitchen, where the water could be heated on the stove.The bathroom was either an eternally disinfected enameled pot with a lid and handle sitting unobtrusively in the corner of one of the bedrooms, or it was a trip down the path behind the salt cedars to the north of the house--too scary for young children to venture.
DONNA VAN CLEVE
___The house was worn, but it always had a scrubbed-clean look about it. The patterned rug in the living room doubled as a map of roads on which small toy cars were driven. The design on the linoleum in the kitchen had long disappeared in the paths to the sink, stove and back door. The cabinets were open shelves; a colorful curtain covered the lower ones. The round hole for the stovepipe heater, long gone, was covered with what looked like a fluted paper plate painted the same color as the wall. For years, it was an odd mystery to the younger generation why paper plates were hung on the walls of older houses. The sound of the screen door springing open was usually accompanied by a loud bang and a parental voice saying, "Don't let the door slam!"
___The refrigerator and freezer always, without exception, harbored good things to eat. Treasures like chocolate sheet cake and ice cream for sugar cones could be found in the chest freezer. Jell-O and potato salads and fried chicken, cut from the whole, greeted weekend visitors to the fridge. Those were the days before the pulley--or wishbone--piece became extinct, and made from scratch cooking was the norm, not the exception.
___At night, the furniture was pushed aside in the living room for a mattress to be laid down as a makeshift bed for the children. The house never had known air-conditioning, but there was usually a nice breeze coming through the windows and screen doors. On really hot nights, though, the kids maneuvered around to get their share of wind from a box fan placed nearby, the noise of it lulling everyone to sleep. Pillows were turned over intermittently to feel a moment's luxury on the cool side.
___The screened front porch housed a multitude of plants flourishing in every sort of container imaginable--coffee cans, Mason jars, plastic pails and ceramic animals. Varieties of plants also grew around the house, as well as in a garden on the side. Hundreds of doodlebug craters could be found in the ancient powdery dirt under the house. Stray cats and dogs that had been dumped and abandoned by irresponsible people found food and refuge at this house. The same could have been said of needy adults and children.
___ Three generations lived happily there, but it sits silent and empty of life now. The hands that so lovingly cared for and maintained it cannot take care of herself anymore. Very few would give that house a second look while driving by, thinking it was nothing more than an old shack, but for many years it was full of faith, love, humility and self-sacrifice towards others.
___In my younger years when we visited this house, I would get so embarrassed when my dad headed straight to the refrigerator after he greeted everyone. But his behavior became perfectly normal when it finally dawned on me that he had come home.
___Donna Van Cleve is director of the public library in Cotulla and is a member of First Baptist Church in Cotulla, where she is church pianist.
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