You Can't Go Home Again

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HappyDaze
Posts: 4186
Joined: Tue Oct 15, 2019 11:11 am

You Can't Go Home Again

Post by HappyDaze »

So the little cape cod style cottage that I lived in with my parents until I was almost 4 is for sale. I have been obsessed with getting back into that house since I was about 11 years old - I don't know why, I just am - or was.

I made an appointment to see it today at 5. DD went with me. Oh friends, it was sad on so many levels. I don't know where to begin. Keep in mind, the real estate agent said the house has been a rental for the past 41 years - I didn't tell her I know it has been a rental for a whole lot longer than that. I never let on that I once lived there.

Let's start with - the place is trashed - in the literal sense of the word. The flooring is torn, whether it be vinyl or carpet, walls are filthy, windows are covered with torn, dirty blankets, litter boxes haven't been scooped in - weeks??? Bags of garbage tossed in the basement - probably a good year's worth.

There was some recognition for me - the same 1940's style cabinets are still in the kitchen with their metal pulls - once shiny, now dull from dirt. I remembered the layout correctly - I knew that the broom closet was the broom closet - I used to hide in there and eat dog chow.

I remembered that you step down from the kitchen to go into the dining room. I remembered where my bedroom was off the living room and knew what door the stairs were behind - although when we lived there, the stairs were open and the upstairs was unfinished - my mom used to hang laundry up there.

The paint on the walls in what was once my bedroom is the same bluish green it was all the way back then, only it seemed so cheerful then and not it's rather sad. The room is used for storage now and was filled to the rafters with - I don't even know what.

Outside, where we had a little barn where my pet pig and pet sheep lived (admittedly, I was a tad spoiled in my earliest years = that didn't last, it all went down hill from here, friends, not that I need to be spoiled to be happy - I do not, just explaining), is all over-grown and piled with trash.

While I recognized things and knew the layout, I did not have that feeling that I was looking for and expecting - that feeling like the house was saying "oh, you''re back, where you been?" There was none of that, like I didn't have that connection that I thought I would have.

I stood in the corner of the dining room where we had a telephone table - the spot where my mom dropped a big old heavy phone into my bassinet and onto onto my head when I was just a few weeks old (I know, that explains a lot) from the shock of being called and told that President Kennedy had been killed. I stood in the pass-through that weirdly connects my parents room, bathroom and kitchen - where my mom used to keep her sewing cabinet and remembered my cousin tipping the cabinet over and hundreds of colorful buttons spilling out all over the place.

I showed DD the few photos I have from that house - one of me at 2 years old, pushing my doll carriage across the living room with my grandmother and great grandmother looking on, so she could see how darling it once was. One of me sitting on the shiny new flooring in the dining room, opening a new baby doll for my third birthday.

Don't know why I am surprised by how this went. In a way, I am oddly satisfied that I got the visit out of my system and learned that you really can't go home again - it won't be like it is in your memories.
"All his life he tried to be a good person. Many times, however, he failed. After all, he was only human. He wasn't a dog."

Charles M. Schultz
Prairie Waif2
Posts: 1868
Joined: Thu Jul 16, 2020 11:33 am
Location: Brandon, Manitoba CANADA

Re: You Can't Go Home Again

Post by Prairie Waif2 »

Happy,

I am glad you did get through your childhood home. It definitely is very difficult to see it squandered by people who don't take care of it or appreciate it.

When I posted the photo of the Big Mansion I grew-up in (My Dad bought as a falling down wreck in 1969 for $13K) I see today's photos and I just can't handle it. I don't want to go inside to see if they have gutted or painted the cherry mahogoney pillars and ceilings in the living rooms. I don't want to know/see if they've painted over the beautiful butternut woods in the Dining room or what they might have done to my Dad's oak library. I shudder to think of what they've done with all the fixtures that were original to the house in 1910.

Nope. Some of us, like you, have to cherish our memories and photographs. I've even held off going to my hometown as I don't want to see the house that was once heralded as one of Luverne, MN great architectural buildings in a ruin. We may have grown up in a literal mansion but we were house rich and very money poor.

MJ
Hope has a good imagination.
clemencia2us
Posts: 11403
Joined: Fri Aug 28, 2015 9:21 am

Re: You Can't Go Home Again

Post by clemencia2us »

Interesting post since our family home is being talked about

Currently my nephew and his family are living there. I am paying all the utilities. And I do not mind. It is something I want to do and can easily afford.

But a couple of my siblings want to sell it and just kick them out. The one sibling is the sick one that I have been helping and her twin. I swear they are evil - :mrgreen:

I don't understand why they want to get rid of the parental home. We all own a share and pay a share of the property taxes.

I wonder if I should just buy it. We had so many good times there. Heck maybe those two did not?? :mrgreen:
Grannysewstoys
Posts: 4143
Joined: Thu Aug 27, 2015 9:37 pm

Re: You Can't Go Home Again

Post by Grannysewstoys »

I haven't been back in my grandparents house since 1949 when my grandmother sold it. Recently it was sold so I was able to look through the house. It was 5 bedroom 3 bath house.

There were multiple changes of course the house had been modernized. Some of the changes were great. Some not how I would have done it.

They enclosed the front porch and I believe added to the sun room and what had been a sleeping porch had been modified to be a game room.

All the changes were not surprising in a house now worth more than 1,000,000 dollars.

Penny
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MackerelCat
Posts: 7226
Joined: Thu Aug 27, 2015 9:44 pm

Re: You Can't Go Home Again

Post by MackerelCat »

My brother said the fellow who bought our mother's house always invited him to come see how he fixed it up, and he could not bear to go in case they had ripped out all the solid wood paneling and carpeted the oak floors. I drove by a few times and could see that they painted the cedar shakes on the addition white, which probably made my dad roll in his grave.
Mackie
snowangel729
Posts: 348
Joined: Fri Sep 04, 2015 9:19 am

Re: You Can't Go Home Again

Post by snowangel729 »

My childhood home actually burned down last week. My sister and her family were living there. Fire Marshall said it was faulty wiring. My sister had it all in shambles and wouldn't put money into it.
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