That Old House

by Tony Ryan

My sister called to tell me that the home we grew up in was being sold.  She had driven by it to take a look and said besides being a different color, the two huge front-corner oak trees were gone, the wrap-around front porch (we’d found many Indian-head pennies and notched arrowheads under that porch) seemed much smaller now than it did long ago.

Note to Sis: the porch hadn’t contracted, we have expanded.

Having lived far away for many years it wasn’t practical for me to go see it so she also said pictures were on the realtor’s website where I could take a look.

I did, and there it was:  8770 Number Nine Road along with a thumbnail photo; I double-clicked.  The instant it popped up, before a single thought had time to register - hot tears were welling in my eyes.  It had been 35 years since I last walked out that side door and towards other phases, places and faces of my life.  But in that rewinding moment, thousands of images burst forth from some secreted space of my memory.

I immediately recalled the sweet smell of the ripe tomatoes Mom kept in a bushel basket in the vestibule off the back door that we’d eat like apples.  The times spent picking the dark raspberries off their thorny bushes in the heat of the hot summer sun out back near the railroad tracks.  Mom made wonderful and delicious pies from those fresh, seedy berries.  There were the purplish-green patches of spine-shivering bitter rhubarb … Yecchh.

I saw the kitchen window and visualized peering in at our dinner table and all of Mom’s great meals there:  steaming plates of spaghetti, extra-crispy potatoes and fried chicken.  I believed with all my young heart that she could have, and should have, opened a restaurant.

Even with this older heart, I still believe that.

Dad hitting us baseballs as we scurried underneath with play army helmets on our hands.  We had turned them upside-down, squeezing our fingers between the helmet and the plastic flower camouflage on the helmet tops.  Dad watched that pitiful but eager sight for a few minutes before loading us into the car and on our way to get our first real leather baseball gloves.

Dad taught me to pitch by always being available to play no matter how his day had gone.  We also shot and scored the winning baskets in hundreds of backyard championship games played before thousands of imaginary, screaming fans out by our old tool shed where the orange, weather-beaten hoop hung.  I once hit a wiffle ball that sailed completely over both the top of our house and the house next door, a feat - to my knowledge - that has never since been duplicated.

There was that sweltering summer day my brother and I sat wilting in living room chairs - cold pop long gone - when my sister came strolling into the room holding a single bottle of Pepsi in her hand.   She was dramatically pouring it in a tall glass over crackling ice.  I am certain that she had long master-mined this production for maximum brother-annoyance.

She succeeded.

Yelling out to our parents was pointless … we’d been bested.  I remember yelling out for a different reason that frightening August day I fell out of a backyard oak tree at age six and fractured both my wrists.  I had been painting the tree with water (Why? Why not?) and swung upside down to finish the job when I lost my slippery grip.  I slammed to the unforgiving ground like a 60 lb. bag of (rock-head) salt.  My breath was completely blasted from me, my arms pinned beneath.  Mom was the only parent home at the time and called Dad.  So upset she later took a straight-back handsaw and cut off both limbs (the trees, not mine).

There were the frosty mornings where we all stood (squirming and squinting into both the September sun and the camera’s lens) for first-day-of-school pictures; our sports trophies proudly displayed on living-room shelves; our bedroom sanctuaries.

All the much-loved pets whose deaths broke our young hearts; those snowy Christmas Eves and cozy Christmas mornings; Mom and Dad calling for us kids to come downstairs and watch the first Beatles appearance on the Ed Sullivan Show.

Both Mom and Dad so much younger then than I am now, but no matter how long I live … it’ll never seem that way.

Thanks Mom and Dad, both for the way things used to be and for the way things are.

As I reflect, I know those times have and always will, greatly impact me and I wish I had the means to purchase that old house.  I’d buy it for my sister so she wouldn’t have to just “go by” … she could “go back.”

Lastly, I believe I know why the tears welled so quickly and unexpectedly.  While I was dusting off those old memories, some of it got into my eyes.

Tony Ryan is married, blessed with five wonderful children and one precious granddaughter. Everything else is a distant second to his family, but he’s also a guitarist who loves humor and working in the human services field.