4 Home 1 – Crestway Drive

Home 1, Crestway Drive

Growing up in my grandparents’ home was idyllic. My chores were cleaning the cement front walk, which accumulated dirt and grass in the cracks between sections; washing the windows upstairs and down (we used Bon Ami); and scrubbing window screens (we used a hose, soap, brushes and brooms). I remember the yucca plants near the street (seldom bloomed due to “sword” fights). I also remember Grandmother’s wigelia bushes below the round-top front door, and the spireas by the back porch. A stone and cement ditch lined our yard at the (too-hot-to-walk-barefoot-on in summer) asphalt street; the front yard was moderately sized and flat, above a stone retaining wall with tile drains; our driveway beside the house was packed-down dirt at first, but later asphalt paved. We lived about half-way up a small hill. We seemed to be surrounded by churchmen: the house next door was bought by a minister; another lived on the corner, and I played in their side yard with their children.

Once I was playing alone on a big tree in the back yard with a home-made trapeze (a la the movie with Tony Curtis); the old rope broke, and in the resulting fall I landed on my neck, and was momentarily unconscious, though not seriously hurt. For several days before Christmas the postman drove our street often every day (it seemed like every hour) with a new batch of mail; I anticipated each visit, and sorted and arranged the cards. I especially liked the Currier and Ives scenes; and a postage stamp was only 3 cents!

My mother had summer begin for us go on May 1, when we were allowed to start going barefoot. I looked forward to this every year, as it took several days for my feet to become toughened to be able to walk on stones and gravel (or hot tar in summer); it was a kind of milestone every spring, when I was no longer a “tenderfoot”. Another milestone: when we were eight, we got our first bicycle; I remember selecting mine at a store downtown: a Schwinn with 24” wheels – too big for a beginner, but I was eager to grow up. When I was little, riding down our across-the-street neighbor’s short paved drive, my sister ran over me with her 26” bike – ran up my legs and back; I squalled as if I were murdered.

Inside, the two story brick house had sand textured plaster walls and ceilings, and white enameled woodwork. Downstairs, the living room was dominated at its outer end by a fireplace (seldom used for our mild winters) with a mantel, over which hung a large oval mirror with a gilt plaster-of-Paris frame, which I got. On the walls at the floor of every room were “registers” or warm air ducts from the heating plant in the basement; I used to huddle by the one in the living room for warmth on chilly mornings. The living room was where we used the card table for Grandfather’s Carrom/Crokinole board, and the rocking chair where Grandmother sat when she worked her crossword and jigsaw puzzles. The room was the site of games like “Blind Man’s Bluff”, “Hide and Seek”, or of our frequent board games; these were housed in the walk-in coat closet, which had a small window. At the end with the chimney (with its flue damper which didn’t work) was a big “Admiral” radio with stickered push-buttons for tuning stations, including short wave or amateur “ham” operators, with a multi-speed record player, and a cabinet below housing a collection of 10” and 12” albums of mostly classical music, many of them RCA Victor “Red Seal” recordings. My grandmother’s “Knabe” upright piano occupied the front wall, with the couch. I used to sit on the carpet, in front of the radio every afternoon; my favorite programs were “Sky King”, “Dragnet”, “The Shadow”, and “Sgt Preston”; I had my always-handy jar of Peter Pan peanut butter (in honor of Sky King), which I ate with a spoon.

Later this room was home to our newly acquired television, where we watched a weekly diet of westerns. My mother’s favorites were “Rawhide”, “Gunsmoke”, “Maverick”, and “Have Gun — Will Travel”. I augmented these with, among others, “Cheyenne”, “The Rifleman”, “Tombstone Territory”, “The Rebel”, “Wanted Dead or Alive”, and “Yancy Derringer” Late Saturday nights I watched old sci-fi (horror) movies.

We had a large dining room with a central table and chairs which had padded tapestry seats; this room had a glass-front china cabinet at its outer end and a cluttered buffet at the other outside. This room was used for the family dinners on most Sundays and holidays, or for the large jigsaw puzzles that were occasionally underway. For family occasions Grandmother used to make her specialty “awful old rolls”, which she cut round, buttered one side and folded that side in, then let them rise on a pan overnight before baking; they were delicious and a highlight of every feast!

There was a breakfast room with a window and a wall-to-wall cabinet with glassed doors above, and a smaller folding-leaved table and chairs; the room had a swinging door to the dining room, and at the other end a doorway to the kitchen; we ate most meals there.

The linoleum-floored kitchen had a large counter cabinet with a porcelain enamel top housing a fold-down flour bin with a dispenser crank and sifter, and a small glass window in front to see the flour level; it held 25 pounds. The other end of the counter held the meat-grinder when we used it; other times it was kept underneath in a “catch-all” drawer with other paraphernalia. The sink was at the side outer wall under a window which looked over the side yard and my mother’s flower beds. The back wall, on which was the electric stove, provided egress to the screened back porch. At the other end was a large walk-in pantry with a trap door above, the refrigerator, and another swinging door to the hallway.

The hall had a windowed lavatory; I thought it curious how my grandfather – who shaved with a straight razor, using a strop for sharpening (which he sometimes used to discipline), and a mug and boar’s whisker brush for shaving lather – had a diamond-shaped fleshy pattern on the back of his neck. The hall also had an enticing door which opened to a winding stairway down to the basement, and the telephone with its own little wooden housing that held the directory underneath. At the end of the hall were the stairway up, the afore-mentioned coat closet, and the entrance to my grandfather’s study.

Grandfather’s study (later my bedroom) was a haven where I read books – there were Milne’s Pooh” series, Carrol’s “Alice” books, and classical books like Stevenson’s Treasure Island and Kidnapped, Defoe’s Robinson Crusoe, and Pyle’s Adventures of Robin Hood and other chivalry stories, and Ripley’s Believe It or Not. There was my grandfather’s old Underwood typewriter and his “Knight of Knothole” portrait, given by that group to honor him. There on the floor and of course, in his big leather rocking chair, I voraciously read, as soon as they arrived with the mail, the scouting magazine Boys’ Life, my grandmother’s house and garden magazines (I liked “Hazel” and the other cartoons), and The Saturday Evening Post with its covers by Norman Rockwell; I also read, at my mother’s suggestion, her copy of the libretto to Mozart’s Italian opera “Don Giovanni”. Here I built an electric guitar, using tuning pegs and a fret board bought downtown, and small magnets and wire for a pickup, and an amplifier (my inspiration was Ricky Nelson, whom we faithfully watched on TV).

The heating plant in the basement was a massive forced warm air furnace, at first fed by an “Iron Fireman” coal stoker (it befell me to keep the stoker full and to remove with large tongs the ash “clinkers”, which we discarded down the hill behind the garage; this coal unit was later converted to burn oil. My sister, cousins and I sometimes roller skated on the cement floor around the furnace, propelled by brooms – great fun!

A wooden windowed winding staircase (with a banister for sliding!) led to the second floor, with its three bedrooms. My grandparents’ room, the largest, had his and her closets (I remember one night when I urinated in his shoe when sleepwalking) and fine mahogany twin beds, and a matching dresser set with a mirrored dressing table for her and a tall chest-of-drawers for him. My boy cousin and I (at my instigation) sometimes pulled the beds together for “wrestling”, much to Grandmother’s chagrin. There was a chair beside her bed, and a large window fan that rapidly cooled the whole house.

My sister had the other large bedroom in front, with her double bed, dresser and two-door closet. We used to climb out her side window onto the roof over the side porch and down the evergreen tree in front.

The third bedroom, over the back porch, was my mother’s, and I slept there, at first in her double bed, later in a twin bed beside. Once as a little boy I was stung by the only scorpion I ever saw, which we found in the covers and killed. Before this room became our bedroom it contained Grandmother’s sewing; I was fascinated by her Singer machine, with its electric motor (I think this later became an heirloom, inherited from my mother, in my cousin Ted’s house).

Over the front door, at the top of the stairs, was the tiled bathroom, with its tub/shower and lavatory. I remember on one occasion sitting on the toilet with diarrhea, self-induced from eating Exlax, which I naively assumed to be foil-wrapped lozenges of chocolate; it never ended until the package was empty!

Between the bathroom and my sister’s bedroom was a large cedar closet, where we used to play and hide; it was very cluttered and had an electric light bulb operated by a pull cord. It seemed our family was always playing music from the radio in the living room. I remember hearing “The Firestone Hour” weekly program, and baritone Lawrence Tibbett, and tenor Richard Crooks singing Stephen Foster songs. Also there were the “Friday Night Fights” (boxing); this didn’t persist, as the program wasn’t our favorite.

At the top of the stairs, next to my mom’s bedroom, was a linen closet. In the middle, also at the stair-top, was a hall, onto which all the rooms opened.

Our house was on a hill, with a big woods in back (perhaps that is why I liked Pooh). We had a dirt-floored garage with two rolling (sliding) doors, and Grandfather had a 1947 Chevrolet. Once I ran down the (6v) battery of his car listening to the “Chicken Shack” program on its radio. Using a big oak tree beside, I often climbed on the garage roof and jumped off, pretending to fly like Superman. I remember playing with a wooden club (a la the newspaper comics’ “Alley Oop”) I had carved, throwing it at the trunk of this tree.

Every fall we used to rake and burn leaves usually in the dirt driveway against a short stone wall (some years we used the ditch in front of our house). Once a glass bottle in the kindling trash bag exploded, and the shrapnel cut my left shin; I still have this scar. Many Sunday afternoons, when my uncle would visit with his family, we went walking in our neighborhood, viewing the always new house construction projects; at one of these, I later wandered alone and stumbled, cutting my right ankle deeply; my aunt, a nurse, applied a “butterfly closure” to the wound to help it heal properly; I have this scar too. In the summer the wall in our driveway was occupied by yellow jackets, and I used to torment them by squirting gasoline with my plastic water pistol and lighting them on fire; occasionally I reversed these events, but I don’t recommend either way – dangerous!

Once I found an injured wild bird that was and kept it for the several days of its recuperation. It was a cedar waxwing, and I called it “Cedric”.

We had a multi-colored hammock between two suitably spaced oaks in the back yard in which my older sister Barbara and I, and neighbor kids, used to give each other “joy rides”; other saner times I swung myself using a rope I anchored in the ground for the purpose. My dog Lady loved this amusement.

On both my feet (my mother sometimes said her feet were “cubical”) my second and third toes are curiously joined to half-way. As a lad I was attempting to build a bird house, standing on a wooden chair in the basement with the short board under my bare feet (it was summer); my grandfather’s old carpenter’s saw cut down the second toe of my right foot. Grandfather bundled my injured foot in a rag, and took me in his Chevrolet to our family doctor’s office, which was downtown on McCallie Avenue. Stitching me up, the doctor wryly observed that if the saw had cut a little to the right, it would have saved him some work, as that would have separated the two toes; I was not amused, just glad that my foot was so simply repaired.

In my early teens, in conjunction with scouting, several friends and I bought jungle “bungle” hammocks at the army-navy surplus store downtown; they were dark olive drab and mostly of nylon fabric, with a roof and mosquito netting. I hung mine between two trees at the top of our wooded hill, and spent hours there; I remember it was sweltering inside it that summer, and I read The Scarlet Letter for Baylor.

As a boy I had two Daisy BB guns (.177 caliber): in succession they were a lever-action “Red Ryder” carbine with 650 shots, and a model 25 pump gun that merely held 50 BBs; armed with the latter I brought down (with welts all over its little body) one of the many grey squirrels which lived in our woods (and showered acorn shells, barking noisily) – I was a relentless little scamp!

There was a big rock/cave in the woods about half way down, with an oak beside it where I built a tree “fort” with scrap lumber from my grandfather’s projects. There and in the cave my friends and I snacked on food stolen from the house. Once running on the woody hillside, my boy cousin Ted fell at the top of the rock, and suffered a cut on his chin – scary!

When I was little, I was called “Sonny”, and liked when my mother read to me (a practice we continued with our children); some of my favorites were “The Little Engine That Could”, “Little Black Sambo”, Kipling’s Just So Stories, Margot Austin’s Churchmouse stories, The Polite Penguin by Margaret Wise Brown, tales about Paul Bunyan, and Uncle Remus stories.

It was nearly always fun playing with the children in my neighborhood. We played cards and board games with the girls across the street, and played ball in their yard. Admiring my new Shakespeare casting reel and Montague rod (he gently corrected my mispronunciation), their father took me fishing at Junior Lake beside Chickamauga Dam (I caught sunfish there using worms for bait). We played ball at another home up the street after school, and played badminton and volleyball at yet another. We played “Kick the Can” most nights, and caught lightning bugs in jars (or hit them with badminton racquets). In the mild winters it rarely snowed, and never more than 3”. We rode our bicycles on the street or on paved neighbor drives, playing “Cops and Robbers” or “Cowboys and Indians” – all while we weren’t at the Brainerd Theater watching kiddy matinees.

I became known (chiefly to Ted) as “Beedle”; he was “Teedle”, and our grandmother was “Greedle”. I remember one time when I tangled a wind-up mouse in my grandmother’s hair; after the initial pain, she rescued herself by cutting the toy out.

Chester, my Rhode Island Red rooster; was my first pet in my grandparents’ home. He intimidated other animals and chased (with his spurs) the St Andrew’s pastor and our next door neighbor, but I loved him and was very gentle with him. He liked to roost on the concrete foundation wall at the inner corner of our back porch, and would huddle there even with rain pouring on him from the roof; I often rescued him from that position.

My next pet was a collie named Lady, given to me by my mother one Christmas; the dog lived back of our house, under the garage or in a shelter I built from scrap lumber, on bedding of cedar shavings my mom said would discourage fleas – they didn’t, but the dog smelled nice. I remember once coming home from a vacation trip and having hordes of hungry fleas jump on my bare legs there – it was awful!

Two parakeets were my last pets at my grandparents’ house. The first was green-and-white and lived in a cage in my grandfather’s study, which served as my bedroom. It had the run of the house, and liked to fly onto our heads and shoulders (which delighted me but greatly annoyed Grandmother), and endlessly perched on the gilt frame of her large oval living-room mirror, messily singing to its reflection. After a few days of patient endurance it flew out a carelessly open window to a tall oak tree outside, where it sang awhile, enticed by me playing on my ukulele (maybe that’s why it left) before departing for the big world. After this bird escaped, it was replaced by a blue-and-white one, with the same behaviors. It also escaped out an upstairs window (think Greedle was onto something), and I gave up having pets for the time.