Untitled Document

Another House

I finally had to sell the Michigan house. Actually, it was the last in a series of houses inhabited by my extended family on this little rural acre and a half. It was amazing that our family even owned a piece of land. I remember riding around the small town of Cadillac Michigan in the powder blue Ford Falcon with my father and my Aunt Jeanette, his youngest sister. I was probably nine years old on that humid summer day. My father flicked cigarette ash out of the car window, as he and my aunt talked nonstop. My cousins and I rolled around in the way back, long before the age of child car seats, complaining about being too hot, and whining to go to the lake. Dad and Aunt 'Nette gave us the grand tour that day of all the houses they had inhabited in the town of Cadillac during their growing-up years. They were mostly small, working-class homes though some had screened porches and modest little yards. On almost every other block they were able to point out a house they had lived in during the Great Depression - those years when my grandfather was perpetually out of work, and they often skipped on the rent - a family with four kids.To hear my family tell it, the 1930's had been one big rollicking adventure after another. My father and his three sisters reminisced about the hard times with loud laughter and probably some degree of embellishment: the time my bootlegging grandfather went to jail, but was allowed to go home on weekends since the local cops had been some of his best customers, the time my father got a snowsuit from the donations box at the church only to be tormented at school the next day by the former owner of the snowsuit - a girl. They talked about going every Saturday to the movies at the Lyric Theater and living vicariously through that Hollywood world of Buck Rogers, James Cagney, Fred Astaire. My dad and my aunt kept up the constant chatter as we drove:

"Oh here's where we lived when Bert got in that car accident..."

"Oh and here's where we lived when Uncle Herm took us ice fishing..."

"Here's where we lived when the dog got run over..."

At each house my dad swerved the car to the side of the road so that he could jump out and take a Polaroid.

The earliest Cadillac house in my own memory was my grandparents' summer place, an Airstream trailer which sat up on blocks on a rural road outside of town, right next to the old family farmhouse which my great grandfather had built, but had had to sell during the Depression. My cousins & I loved going "up to the trailer" or "up North" as we called it. First of all, it was the country, which was exceptionally alluring to a New York City kid like me. We could play for hours unsupervised in the woods, the maze-like cornfields or the Christmas tree farm across the road. We could catch frogs and pick berries and get as dirty as we wanted. There were deer and rabbits and my grandfather had even seen a bear at the edge of the woods one twilight. Ancient apple trees that looked like gnarled little old men grew in the front yard, and one of them held a tire swing we always fought for turns on. Water came from an old-fashioned pump in back. The bathroom was an outhouse in which my grandparents had placed one of those heavily shellacked wooden plaques from the Five and Dime, which read "This is the Bathroom. The job is never finished 'til the paperwork is done."

The trailer was tiny & cozy inside with golden wood paneling and little café curtains patterned with wildlife scenes. My grandmother, my aunts and my mother would crowd around the tiny sink washing dishes with a tub of water from the pump and talk about mysterious grownup things like childbirth, how much things cost, and in lowered voices, the divorces and drinking problems of certain family members. Only the grownups could score sleeping spots in the trailer itself or on its tiny tacked-on screen porch. My cousins and I slept outside in tents, which was much more fun anyway unless you had to pee in the night and venture out to the outhouse, which exposed you to the risk of being eaten by a bear. It was hard to get to sleep on a summer night with the crickets chirping right next to our heads and the sounds of laughter and clinking ice cubes from the trailer that seemed to go on all night.

Shortly after my grandmother died, the trailer was taken away. In its place, the family built a little cottage, which came to be affectionately known as "the shack." Except for the rustic stone fireplace my Dad insisted on, and the distinct advantage of indoor plumbing, the place was tackier by far than the trailer. The walls in every room were covered with fake wood paneling in a grayish hue that was meant to simulate driftwood. One of my teenage cousins made a large silver-painted plaster plaque featuring the signs of the Zodiac for my grandfather's seventy fifth birthday. It hung over the fireplace for years, but I don't think he ever really caught the meaning of the thing. He kept it mainly because it riled his sister Opal, a God-fearing woman, fiercely beautiful even in her nineties, who refused to look at it and mumbled about it's being the "Devil's work."

The shack became the year round residence for my grandfather in his last years. My uncles used it for an ice-fishing and hunting lodge on weekends. The family still gathered there for reunions in the summer. There was almost room for everyone to sleep indoors if you didn't mind sharing a foldout couch or the noise of the drinking and the card playing, which went into the wee hours. I can still recall falling asleep to the sound of someone yelling, "Who dealt this mess?" raucous laughter, and the exclamations like "Good night Nurse!" from the aunts and "Son-of-a Bitch!" from the uncles.

After my grandfather's death, the family used the shack for many years as a weekend and reunion spot, but there were always complaints about how small and ill-equipped the place was; how the roof leaked, how we needed a second bathroom, and more windows, and a better kitchen. My family had moved up in the world. After many years of just talk, and a few more of actual planning, the shack was finally razed so that my Dad could fulfill his dream of building his own ideal retirement home in Cadillac. This house was designed and built by a real architect from New York. He kept the rustic stone fireplace, but everything else in the new house was clean and white and pale wood, modern in the manner of all things cherished by people who grew up during the Depression. A picture window looked out to the meadow in back where we used to watch for deer and wild turkeys and the bear which never came. My father's plan was to spend summers and Christmases at the new Michigan house, and stay in his New York City apartment the rest of the year. Six months after the house was finished, he died from the cancer he had fought for three years. I was able to hang onto the house for five more years. I know my dad would have wanted us to enjoy it for him. We visited every summer, so that my own kids could swing on the swing and play in the woods and watch for deer in the meadow, and for the bear which never came. So that they could hear my cousins and I talk about the way it used to be with the trailer and the outhouse and the old farmhouse next door that we thought was haunted, and how it must sound as different and far away to them as the Depression had sounded to us.

Last year, the maple trees I planted with my cousins in 1969 had grown to enormous heights, far above the roofline, supporting a swing and a hammock between them. The wizened old apple trees from the days of the trailer still bore fruit, and a new red maple stood in the back outside the picture window, in memory of my dad. But I had to sell the house; it was too expensive to keep up. None of my cousins could take on the responsibility either. They all had their own mortgages, worries, and families to support. Sentimentality alone could not carry the day, it seemed. So I guess I had to skip on the rent, too, in a manner of speaking. The new house was almost too beautiful, too new, and too rich for my family's blood - maybe not enough of a shack, after all. When I was cleaning out the closets that last summer, I came across the envelope of Polaroids from my father's Cadillac house tour; the colors faded, the street addresses written meticulously on the back of each one with ballpoint pen. They never lost faith, my family. There would always be another house.




	Another House I finally had to sell the Michigan house. Actually, it was the last in a series of houses inhabited by my extended family on this little rural acre and a half. It was amazing that our family even owned a piece of land. I remember riding around the small town of Cadillac Michigan in the powder blue Ford Falcon with my father and my Aunt Jeanette, his youngest sister. I was probably nine years old on that humid summer day. My father flicked cigarette ash out of the car window, as he and my aunt talked nonstop. My cousins and I rolled around in the way back, long before the age of child car seats, complaining about being too hot, and whining to go to the lake. Dad and Aunt 'Nette gave us the grand tour that day of all the houses they had inhabited in the town of Cadillac during their growing-up years. They were mostly small, working-class homes though some had screened porches and modest little yards. On almost every other block they were able to point out a house they had lived in during the Great Depression - those years when my grandfather was perpetually out of work, and they often skipped on the rent - a family with four kids.To hear my family tell it, the 1930's had been one big rollicking adventure after another. My father and his three sisters reminisced about the hard times with loud laughter and probably some degree of embellishment: the time my bootlegging grandfather went to jail, but was allowed to go home on weekends since the local cops had been some of his best customers, the time my father got a snowsuit from the donations box at the church only to be tormented at school the next day by the former owner of the snowsuit - a girl. They talked about going every Saturday to the movies at the Lyric Theater and living vicariously through that Hollywood world of Buck Rogers, James Cagney, Fred Astaire. My dad and my aunt kept up the constant chatter as we drove: "Oh here's where we lived when Bert got in that car accident..." "Oh and here's where we lived when Uncle Herm took us ice fishing..." "Here's where we lived when the dog got run over..." At each house my dad swerved the car to the side of the road so that he could jump out and take a Polaroid. The earliest Cadillac house in my own memory was my grandparents' summer place, an Airstream trailer which sat up on blocks on a rural road outside of town, right next to the old family farmhouse which my great grandfather had built, but had had to sell during the Depression. My cousins & I loved going "up to the trailer" or "up North" as we called it. First of all, it was the country, which was exceptionally alluring to a New York City kid like me. We could play for hours unsupervised in the woods, the maze-like cornfields or the Christmas tree farm across the road. We could catch frogs and pick berries and get as dirty as we wanted. There were deer and rabbits and my grandfather had even seen a bear at the edge of the woods one twilight. Ancient apple trees that looked like gnarled little old men grew in the front yard, and one of them held a tire swing we always fought for turns on. Water came from an old-fashioned pump in back. The bathroom was an outhouse in which my grandparents had placed one of those heavily shellacked wooden plaques from the Five and Dime, which read "This is the Bathroom. The job is never finished 'til the paperwork is done." The trailer was tiny & cozy inside with golden wood paneling and little café curtains patterned with wildlife scenes. My grandmother, my aunts and my mother would crowd around the tiny sink washing dishes with a tub of water from the pump and talk about mysterious grownup things like childbirth, how much things cost, and in lowered voices, the divorces and drinking problems of certain family members. Only the grownups could score sleeping spots in the trailer itself or on its tiny tacked-on screen porch. My cousins and I slept outside in tents, which was much more fun anyway unless you had to pee in the night and venture out to the outhouse, which exposed you to the risk of being eaten by a bear. It was hard to get to sleep on a summer night with the crickets chirping right next to our heads and the sounds of laughter and clinking ice cubes from the trailer that seemed to go on all night. Shortly after my grandmother died, the trailer was taken away. In its place, the family built a little cottage, which came to be affectionately known as "the shack." Except for the rustic stone fireplace my Dad insisted on, and the distinct advantage of indoor plumbing, the place was tackier by far than the trailer. The walls in every room were covered with fake wood paneling in a grayish hue that was meant to simulate driftwood. One of my teenage cousins made a large silver-painted plaster plaque featuring the signs of the Zodiac for my grandfather's seventy fifth birthday. It hung over the fireplace for years, but I don't think he ever really caught the meaning of the thing. He kept it mainly because it riled his sister Opal, a God-fearing woman, fiercely beautiful even in her nineties, who refused to look at it and mumbled about it's being the "Devil's work." The shack became the year round residence for my grandfather in his last years. My uncles used it for an ice-fishing and hunting lodge on weekends. The family still gathered there for reunions in the summer. There was almost room for everyone to sleep indoors if you didn't mind sharing a foldout couch or the noise of the drinking and the card playing, which went into the wee hours. I can still recall falling asleep to the sound of someone yelling, "Who dealt this mess?" raucous laughter, and the exclamations like "Good night Nurse!" from the aunts and "Son-of-a Bitch!" from the uncles. After my grandfather's death, the family used the shack for many years as a weekend and reunion spot, but there were always complaints about how small and ill-equipped the place was; how the roof leaked, how we needed a second bathroom, and more windows, and a better kitchen. My family had moved up in the world. After many years of just talk, and a few more of actual planning, the shack was finally razed so that my Dad could fulfill his dream of building his own ideal retirement home in Cadillac. This house was designed and built by a real architect from New York. He kept the rustic stone fireplace, but everything else in the new house was clean and white and pale wood, modern in the manner of all things cherished by people who grew up during the Depression. A picture window looked out to the meadow in back where we used to watch for deer and wild turkeys and the bear which never came. My father's plan was to spend summers and Christmases at the new Michigan house, and stay in his New York City apartment the rest of the year. Six months after the house was finished, he died from the cancer he had fought for three years. I was able to hang onto the house for five more years. I know my dad would have wanted us to enjoy it for him. We visited every summer, so that my own kids could swing on the swing and play in the woods and watch for deer in the meadow, and for the bear which never came. So that they could hear my cousins and I talk about the way it used to be with the trailer and the outhouse and the old farmhouse next door that we thought was haunted, and how it must sound as different and far away to them as the Depression had sounded to us. Last year, the maple trees I planted with my cousins in 1969 had grown to enormous heights, far above the roofline, supporting a swing and a hammock between them. The wizened old apple trees from the days of the trailer still bore fruit, and a new red maple stood in the back outside the picture window, in memory of my dad. But I had to sell the house; it was too expensive to keep up. None of my cousins could take on the responsibility either. They all had their own mortgages, worries, and families to support. Sentimentality alone could not carry the day, it seemed. So I guess I had to skip on the rent, too, in a manner of speaking. The new house was almost too beautiful, too new, and too rich for my family's blood - maybe not enough of a shack, after all. When I was cleaning out the closets that last summer, I came across the envelope of Polaroids from my father's Cadillac house tour; the colors faded, the street addresses written meticulously on the back of each one with ballpoint pen. They never lost faith, my family. There would always be another house.