The house on Reid St.
Editors note: I was going through Mil's writings today and found this gem. I have looked through his past posts and don't see that it has been posted. There are other posts about the house on Reid, but this one provides such a colorful picture of boyhood in 1940's America that it it deserves a read.
THE OLD HOUSE
by Mil
The old house sits there, lonely- looking on the corner with its windows boarded. It has been allowed to run down and deteriorate. Other houses nearby are neatly stuccoed, roofs are new, flowers are growing. Even the big elms planted in the early 40's have been cut down. Where a clover and grass lawn was once the summer water place for kid's play, there are bare spots and a little Bermuda, struggling for a foothold.
Looking at this old beat-up house, it is hard to realize that I smelled the newness of the paint and was the first person to sleep in that new front bedroom, way back in 1940.
We had moved, gone to a carnival, and somewhere bought some orange slices. That is the sort of thing kids remember, I guess.
They say it takes a heap of living to make a home. Well, that house certainly had its share when we lived there 1940-48. We planted elms and they grew big and the kids climbed in them. We watered each other with the hose and slid around in the wet clover. We had a cow pen, chicken coop, rabbit hutches, all gone. We had a garden - a big garden- all this gave some structure to the back yard. All gone now - just a vacant lot appearance.
The ruts in the back where Dad parked his pickup are gone.
The new stucco, in spots, has peeled off the old, leaving giant bare spots. It needs a new roof.
The bushes and roses around the house are gone.
The old 1100 is still on the front post, the same as before, running downward vertically.
The old hump is still in the sidewalk, impeding any roller skaters or tricyclists just as it did 40 years ago.
I learned to play jacks on that sidewalk. Yes, boys watched the girls and had a go at it. I played marbles out there beyond the sidewalk. I built dams along that curb when it rained. I climbed those trees on a hot summer's day and watched the world go by. I stood in front of that big window in front and yelled "yanh-yanh" at the kids throwing rocks, because one thing they wouldn't do, was throw it at a big window.
We picked ups bottles of milk off that porch in the morning. It was Collins Dairy, with the orange lettering on the bottle. Campbell's milk had red lettering.
I had a baseball backstop on the edge of that backyard, next to the street. Mother killed chickens for lunch in that yard.
We told ghost stories on the lawn out front on a long summer evening. Through that window over there, I heard FDR with his fire-side chats as the old radio brought them to us.
The garage where we kept our '41 Chevy has been enclosed and made into a room. The door is open and old furniture and trash are strewn around.
Back there behind the garage was a tall fence with a 2x4 brace near the top. This was our "Tarzan on the vines", our "airmen bailing out of the plane" area. Yes, we'd jump 4 or 5 feet to the ground for effect.
Next door was the kid with all the latest comic books. You could always get the latest Batman, Superman, Wonder Woman, Gene Autry, Roy Rogers comics if you had something good to trade.
Two blocks over lived a family where, as an early teenager, I borrowed all the Zane Grey books. What joy!
In 1941 it rained so much that a lake four blocks wide formed about a block North of us.
Once, they had massive holes, like giant graves, 8 feet deep, dug in the streets for laying pipe. It rained so much they were half full of water. One day my brother disappeared and everyone feared he had fallen in one of them. We searched everywhere. A happy ending, he was found at my uncle's.
A block down on a vacant lot we played "army". We dug two pill boxes, roofed them and dug a tunnel between. I get cold sweat now when I think: "What if that tunnel had collapsed?"
Another block down on another vacant lot, we built a good back-stop and had some hot baseball games. We had a "good" hard ball if we were lucky--the rest were covered with black friction tape.
I went to Boy Scouts on my bike from that house. I got my first gun- a Red Ryder BB gun- at that house. I licked the front sight, too, just like Sergeant York.
On weekends we would get the Denver Post with several pages of comics. We read them cover to cover. There was no TV and little radio on weekends.
During the week we listened to Bob Hope, Fibber McGee and Molly, Mr. District Attorney, the Lemac Show, and "Can You Top This?" If you were sick and missed school you'd listen to "Queen for a Day"...("Would YOU like to be Queen for a Day??"). Compared to the TV offerings of today, kids had little media entertainment. Mother once said: "I read that someday, they would have it where you could WATCH as well as listen to a radio." I looked at that little lighted dial with the numbers on it and wondered how you could see anyone in there.
Then the Japanese bombed Pearl Harbor. I, though very small, listened to the reports on that radio that it was feared Japanese planes would fly over San Francisco on that Sunday evening, (wherever San Francisco was).
The Clovis Journal landed on that lawn and we hurried to see how Joe Palooka and Jerry Leemy were doing against the Nazis, with their cool .45's on their hips.
Looking at that house today, it seems incredibly small. It didn't seem small THEN. Of course, who ever head of four bedrooms and a two-car garage? Only the doctors or auto dealers had those kind of houses.
At that house we had a Black-Out once during WW II. All lights in town were turned off at about 8:30 p.m. and planes flew around.
During WWII we watched the B-24's fly circles around town; then later B-17s, and I think finally B-24's. We saw a captured Japanese Zero once in a big tent downtown. For 25 cents you could get in, walk up a scaffold and look into the cockpit. It was much bigger than I thought a "fighter" plane would be.
Why do we become attached to houses? I guess because they are a part of our lives --our past--which is gone. Our memories go back to a simpler time - a time that is gone, never to be recovered. But like loved ones, they live in our memories and can never be erased. Maybe a home is more than wood and stucco.
Mil's Place
Posted posthumously 3/28/2022
