The pretender

From about first grade to the end of my eighth grade year we lived in a house on 8th Street. This was the house close to the fairgrounds I talked about a lot in other posts. This house had a screwed up floor plan (or at least my parents laid out our dwelling weirdly). And the property was laid out odd as well. See the bottom of this post below the lines for a description of the house and property.

Down the sidewalk from my house in the backyard was our detached garage. At its pinnacle it was probably 15 feet tall. It wasn't quite a double car garage, but had plenty of room for other stuff along with a single vehicle. There was no garage door. On the side of the garage was a tool shed. We didn’t really keep tools in there, just junk. There was no floor in either room of the building, just hard dirt.

I didn't really mess with the garage portion, other than storing my bike in there. The other room, the tool shed, became my sanctuary. I even scratched “No Girls” into the paint above the door. This room DID have a door, it had wooden planks and at the middle there was a cross plank. Think of it like a gate to a wooden privacy fence.

In the room there was a large shelf that ran all the way across the west wall. Upon it sat paint cans, shotgun shells, nails, 8-track tapes, and cartons of oil. Boring stuff. Toward the back there was a wooden box with a wood lid. This was big enough to be a casket. It was empty and I knew that, but still freaked me out after dark. What if Dracula was invisible during the day? What if he slept in there? If you stood on top of the box you could climb up onto the “ceiling”. In reality there was no ceiling. Just a roof with 2x4's jetting from wall to wall. It was like a floorless attic. You could still climb around the entire building on those if careful.

At the back of the tool shed there was a hole in the wall that led outside. About three feet to the south across from the shed was another building. This was a storage shed. Inside the storage shed was a lawn mower, a weight bench and boxes of my dad's old army stuff. Unlike the other buildings, this one had a floor. A concrete foundation. There was nothing between the two buildings other than a steel drum, empty beer cans, and weeds.

In our tool shed I'd often read. I didn't like boredom at all. There's only so much solo time with toys one can stand. And I wasn't into watching eight hours of TV a day. So I participated in a school contest. The teacher had books you could check out. You read it, take the test at the end of the book, turn both the book and test in. Then the teacher records your progress and hands you another book. I read more of these books than anybody else in my whole school. I was reading a book every day almost. I read in the tool shed, even in the rain. The pounding of water on the metal roof was soothing. I loved to read. I'd imagine I were the protagonist on whatever adventure was on those sacred pages. I've been a pirate, a cowboy, a space cadet, even a school girl. I didn't care. The point is that I had people to rescue, jewels to steal, dinosaurs to wrangle. You name it. And in that shed I had the privacy to read aloud and speak to my self the monologues of bonus scenes I'd make up on the spot. I had an adventurous spirit inside the solitude of those four walls. An adventurer that went everywhere in the universe but remained in the safety of my home.

I ended up getting honored for all my reading. As a reward for my achievement in literary excellence I got a certificate. A ribbon is the least they could have given me. A stinking certificate of achievement? Not even a coupon to the Golden Corral? I suppose those dozens of free trips around the world should have been reward enough. Anyway, that method of killing time was more fulfilling than the time killer I was duped into taking part of in 3^rd grade. Mrs. Crittenden gave us all spiral notebooks. When we were done with our work we were to write numbers. Yes. Write numbers. That way we were always busy and not making trouble. Write a number on a line, then next number under it and so forth. When you reach the bottom, draw a line straight down, this made a column. Then repeat until the page is full. Then turn the page. I actually did this, and am pretty sure I got further than anybody. I have no idea how far I got but it had to have been in the thousands. There was no prize for being numerically superior. Just wasted pencil lead and wasted time. I was a sucker.

Back at the garage, one of my favorite things to do was climb up on the roof. I would climb along the inside of the tool shed door where my foot balanced on the middle cross plank. I'd then pull myself onto the roof. Once up there, I'd use my hands to form a gun (later years I'd use my worthless electronic survivor shot gun and “bang! Bang! Pkow!” I'd shoot bad guys. To increase authenticity I’d often have to run away if I were overwhelmed by the sheer volume of evil masses. I'd leap from the garage right onto the smaller roof of the storage shed. It also had a mostly metal roof, accept for a couple sheets of translucent fiberglass. I'd jump back and forth. Sometimes instead of rapscallions I was pursued by packs of vicious starving lions. The king of beasts never prevailed. I was too slick.

The air blew in my face and my wings were spread all of those three feet of open space when I was airborne. The distance between the two buildings varied by the adventure. Sometimes it was the actual three feet, others it was a massive canyon that I had to use my pre-Matrix reality altering abilities to clear. I couldn't tell you how many scoundrels I escaped, but I beat them all, but one. There came a point when I was forced into retirement.

My perilous exploits came crashing down. I had miscalculated the speed and force required to clear the space and hurt myself. I landed in the steel drum. Back first. I was fortunate that there was junk in there. Had that barrel been empty I could have folded like a lawn chair. I could have been stuck or maybe even broke my back.

I was stunned. I just lay on top of that drum unable to breath for what seemed like five or six minutes. Eventually I got off there and made it to the back porch. There I curled up in the fetal position. OUCH! OUCH! I cried and cried for a while. I had a huge long curved bruise toward the top of my back with scratches. And toward my ass there were equal bruises and scratches, just upside down. I never went back on that roof again.

Other than my bedroom, my favorite room in the house was probably the laundry room. Plenty of imagination went on in there. We had a washer and dryer, though mom hardly used the dryer. Primarily she dried clothes on the line in the backyard. Mom kept the ironing board propped against the wall next to  the washer. The flat side against the wall. I would climb up on the washer and use the legs as a steering wheel. It was perfect. Each time I climbed up, the lid would make a loud “POP! Noise as I put all my weight on the center.

I would sit on that lid “Indian style” (now the kids say criss cross applesauce) and grab hold of the ironing board legs. It was a ship, a car (specifically KIT from Knight Rider), a spacecraft, a plane, etc...It may have been a time machine once. Surely there are other kids that rode their washing machines? I've never heard anybody else talk about it though.

Children use whatever resources are at their disposal to fight boredom. If “idle hands are the devils workshop” (Proverbs 16:27), then young children are not in Satan's toolbox, they are far from his target audience. Kids just won't accept doing nothing as an option. Between sleep, eating, school, and playtime there was very little down time. I always sought action. It's true that in later years of my early adolescence I'd turn to television and video games to fill my time, but I always preferred reading or actively doing stuff. The 80s and early 90s were fertile grounds for creative growth. The house on 8^th Street certainly provided the necessary fields required to nurture my development.

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Playing with my tree in the back yard. 1988

If I had to pick a single song to be the soundtrack to this post it would be...

Bonus coverage (the house and property on 8th street)

expertly drawn floor plan after not being in house for 21 years

expertly drawn layout of property after not being there for 21 years

People that knew us knocked on the back door.  The front door required folks to walk across our yard, stepping over a ditch or walking 20 yards across our grass.  The driveway was off to the side and led to a sidewalk that went to our back door. Yes, was odd that the original builders didn't think it necessary to have good access to the front door. Guess things were different back in 1925.  It's just as well though. We only had a single old fashioned skeleton key that worked for the front door, and we kept that in the keyhole on the inside.

So a description of the layout if one were to enter from the front...we had a large covered porch with a porch swing. Some rose bushes were planted along the front of the porch. Once you entered the front door, you were in a small entry way. It was probably about five feet by five feet. To the right was a door that led to my room. It was inaccessible, I had my dresser on the other side of that door. Immediately to your front was a door with glass that led to our living room. So that small entry way had three doors in it. Once you entered the living room you were in a room with a high ceiling. In fact, the whole house had high ceilings accept the back room. The living room had a couch, love seat, recliner, tall coffee table, a TV sitting on the floor and a huge ass hutch/entertainment center/booze closet thing. On the right side of the room were huge french doors with curtains hanging on the other side. My parents room was on the other side of those doors. They usually had them locked, they had a large wardrobe and a TV blocking it anyway. In the back of the room was a doorway. They never had the door on the hinges. We typically had curtains hanging in that doorway. This kept in warm air in that room in the winter, and cool air in the summer. We had no central heat and air. Little gas heaters in the winter and window units in the summer.

On the other side of that door in the living room was a common area. Just a large open space straight ahead. We had a dresser to the left and a futon on the right. If you kept walking back, you'd hit the back door. To the left was a little doorless room my Papa (Dad's dad) stayed at until he passed away in 1991. There was a small closet. TO the right of the entry from the living room was our large kitchen. No dishwasher. Plenty of cabinets and our phone hanging on the wall. There was a breakfast nook that was next to our laundry room. We had a washer and dryer, though my mom usually hung up clothes to dry on a line in the back yard.

Around the corner was my parents room. Though I don't think it was originally designed as a bedroom. Probably more as an entertaining room or something. Whatever was in fashion in the 1920s. My bedroom was next to theirs. That's awesome. We blocked the door to the entryway with my dresser so the only access to my room was through theirs. Unless I used my windows. I shared my closet with my sister.

Back to the common room, on the opposite wide form where the kitchen was was the single bathroom and my sister's room. She had a huge room and, unlike me a ceiling fan. Posters from heavy metal magazines adorned her entire wall. It was like wallpaper. Poison, Motley Crue, Warrant, Winger, Poison, more Poison. She had a larger closet that my parents used as their own.

I haven't been in that home in 21 years, but I remember it clearly.

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