My past hollowed out

[Zalmoxis]

When my maternal grandfather retired he, my grandmother and my mom (who was about to enter here senior year of high school), moved to a small town in southern Utah. My grandfather built the house he moved into. It was a unique place -- it's walls made of rocks cemented together. Some of the rocks were quite beautiful -- huge geodes, large chunks of peacock copper, sandstone, small river-polished boulders. He and my grandmother were rock hounds. And in fact as sort of a hobby he opened up a rock shop in this town -- sold petrified wood, geodes, semi-precious stones, American Indian-produced goods, etc. In fact, he was the first person to sell sandstone landscape products -- you may have seen this marketed as "Wonderstone" or "Picturestone." His last name was Green. He chose to embrace the name and painted the parts of the outside of the house that were wood green and put down green carpets.

It was a small house -- but was on a large piece of property. It also had a carport, a separate structure that contained a studio apartment and a workshop -- next to this structure was another small building that was a dark, cool huge storehouse filled with foodstuffs and other supplies. There was a large completely screened in porch next to a small lawn, and then a large garden area with a greenhouse and beehives. The house had a flat roof and before my grandmother became infirm, my grandparents would sometimes sleep up on it. I remember stargazing up on the roof in these lawn chairs that consisted of a metal frame and full size mattresses.

The people in this small, conservative Mormon town thought he was rather strange.

I lived next door to my grandparents from age 5 to 12 and was over at their house almost every single day. It forms a unique place in my history and psyche. My parents have always rented. So this home and my paternal grandparents home in California were what I considered home.

Three years after we moved away, my grandfather died (my grandmother had died while we were living there -- it was a sad event but not traumatic because she was sick for a long time). The house was inherited by my aunt. She is the sort of person that can never stay in one place or job for long. She took out a mortgage on it. She defaulted on it and the bank took possession of it.

I have been wondering about the status of the house. I have had delusions of someday buying it and turning it into a kind of artists retreat -- of maybe getting an academic job or earning a living via freelance work and being able to stay at the house for a month or two during the summer and then lend it out to other creative people I know who need a place to finish work -- get away with it all. These are delusions. Neither I nor my parents are in any position to rescue it.

So my mom e-mailed me yesterday. This is what has happened with the house: http://therockcottage.com/kanab-lodging.html

On the one hand I feel relieved that it hasn't been torn down. That it will continue. On the other hand -- I feel like I've lost something, like a part of my past has been hollowed out.

[GreNME]

I know the feeling.

My grandfather came to the US at the age of 6 with German immigrants. Once he was of age, he worked and worked, and eventually began his own business. Yeah, it was a sewage-pumping business, but one thing people always make is sewage, and there is always a need for someone to pump the tanks clean.

He made good money. Enough to buy not only enough land for his busniess and his wife, but enough land to build almost a dozen houses along a dirt road he decided to call "Lieske Lane."

He built houses there. Most of the extended family—the children, close relatives, family friends—lived on Lieske Lane. We lived right down the street from Cal Ripken (my dad had dinner there a few times, worked at an auto shop Ripken worked at off-season, and my grandfather knew Cal Sr.). The business stayed stable. I grew up my first 8 years in a house there.

Then my grandfather died.

My uncle took over the business. Things were okay for a while there, but then debt reared its ugly head, and my uncle began selling off land and houses. My grandmother died 20 years later, and things went steeper downhill. The house I grew up in no longer belongs to the family. Most of Lieske Lane isn't even Lieske any more.

The house I grew up in had meaning for me because my parents were asked to move in because I was born as they lived in a run-down trailer filled with roaches and neither parent having more than a minimum wage job. After we moved out, which I later learned was partially because we couldn't afford to stay there any longer (even though it was owned by my uncle). Up until I graduated high school, I lived poor. The high point of any trip down to Maryland to see the family was to go to Lieske Lane and actually stand on a land that wasn't owned by some stranger, but by those of my own flesh and blood. To be able to run around in the woods behind the houses, dip my feet in the creek in the woods, "explore" things like the strange old house from the 20's (according to the last newspaper in it and some other trinkets) that sat way back in the woods away from civilization. This was "home." Now, it's someone else's.

It breaks my heart.

[Jon Boy]

It's a weird enough feeling to drive past one's childhood home and see a new family living there, along with whatever additions or changes they've made to it. I can't imagine how sad it must be to see such a place being rented out to strangers.

[Icarus]

I understand how you feel. Have you considered staying there, though? Short of being able to buy it, this could allow you to reconnect with your memories on a short-term basis . . .

[Guest]

Ic: No, I haven't. Most of the reasons for me to go to Kanab are now gone. If I were to travel to southern Utah, though, I probably wouldn't stay there -- but I would go and see it.

JB: Yeah, it's not just the feeling of home that hurts so much -- it's that something so unique and built by my grandfather's hands is no longer part of the family.

John: Thanks for sharing your story. There's something about owning land that is deeply ingrained in my psyche -- for all my high-falootin' po-mo, urbane veneer, I'm very much an American Westerner. I joke sometimes with my siblings about creating the Morris Family Compound. It'll never happen, but there are times when it sounds like a cool thing.

However, I do think, considering the housing market in so many areas as well as the high cost of childcare, that the time is ripe for more multi-generational families choosing to live together. I know some twenty/thirtysomething Mormon couples with children that live with parents -- althought come to think of it, it's always with a single parent i.e. one of the parents is deceased or divorced and living elsewhere. I guess that's a less threatening situation.

I also know a non-Mormon couple that is pooling resources with the female spouse's mom and looking to buy a duplex.

Granted, there's a danger in mixing generations in this way. I know that it was difficult for my father to have his retired, successful father-in-law looking over his shoulder and making comments about his not very successful (in terms of generating income -- he did a lot of good in that community) law practice.

[Zalmoxis]

Obviously, that's me above. I clean my cookies cache out fairly regularly and forgot to log in.

----
Not that it's a huge sample size -- but I find it interesting that only men have posted on this thread. I'm not sure in what way it is interesting. I see no reason why women wouldn't also feel a sense of loss in the situations John and I describe. So how about it -- can any of you female Grenmetics relate? Or does home mean something different for you?

[katharina]

My mother and her sisters spent their summers on grandma and grandpa's ranch in East Texas. The big house, the lake, horses, the works.

After Grandma died (when my mom was 20), Grandpa married a woman thirty-five years younger than him who discouraged him seeing his grandchildren. After he died, the ranch was left to her in toto, and she has passed it on to her children from her first marriage.

My aunt is STILL upset. I've never seen it, but I miss the idea.

The other side - the Pilkingtons - have commercial land and a dream of Pilkington Drive, but it's not the same. The price of keeping that land is running the business, and, uh, not a chance. There was my great-grandmother's 1910 house in Cache Valley, but there's not any real attachment.

However, I've read Gone with the Wind. If I had a family and a history for which fighting would be effective, I'd do it. Zal, that is rough. You have my sympathies. :(

[celia60]

I thought about posting this earlier, but my story is sort of insignificant by comparison. And not the same thing, since we didn't own the place. You asked for it.

When my mother and father got married, they decided they wanted to live a simpler life and get back to nature. They rented a house from an Amish family with a decent sized garden. Dad worked in a gas station a couple miles away to pay what little bills they had. They had no electricity and no running water. They were happy.

Of course, when their first child came along, they suddenly missed all the comforts of modern society, so they moved. Having spent only a few months in that house, I don't actually remember it at all. I know that it's where I was born with a country doctor and a midwife helping.

I also know that when the owners died, their sons decided it would rent for more if it had electricity and plumbing, so when I drove out to see it, I was greeted with lawn sprinklers and the sound of a television. It's just another part of my past that was gone before I ever started looking.

[Slash the Berzerker]

Is it weird that I have never in my life felt any connection to a place?

I am 35 and have never owned a home because I've never had any desire for 'my own land'. I mean, I've been in a financial position to buy a house for a long time. Just never wanted to be tied to any one place for too long.

My wife is buying us a house now. I wonder how I will feel about that years from now if we are still in it.

[Zalmoxis]

Slash: Maybe you just haven't experienced the right place.

But as attractive as having one's own land is, the whole inheritence thing gets ugly -- like in kat's story (and mine). One of my most vivid childhood memories of my dad in his role as lawyer was visiting a family with him that was engaged in a land dispute -- it got very, very ugly. I don't remember the whole story but it involved property lines, road usage, a trailer, a shotgun and a trip to the Utah state mental facility.

I think, celia, that what's interesting about your story is that it's not the place so much as the way of life. Do you ever wonder if in some ways that way of life would have made your childhood better? [Not that it was bad].

----
Part of why this is so painful for me is that it is tied into other losses from Kanab.

My paternal great grandfather also lived in town. He had a great Victorian house with all sorts of interesting rooms and features. There was also a barn and a garage/workshop and a courtyard and a balcony. Anyway, it was a great house and a meeting place for the Morris clan -- my grandparents would visit every summer from California along with the younger aunts and uncles. After my great grandfather died, that house was sold to a couple who gentrified it [weird to think about but that phenomenon has hit even small towns in southern Utah]. I don't feel as much of a sense of loss, but it's another hit.

The major loss for me -- which occurred while I was still living there -- has says all sorts of things about me probably, but I'll share it anyway.

Kanab had a wonderful two-story red sandstone county courthouse. It was across the street from my elementary school -- which was next to the LDS church. I saw these three buildings almost every day of my life for several years. While I rarely went to the courthouse, it was an important structure for me. Part of that was because my dad was lawyer, no doubt. But there's was something beyond that. And it wasn't just abstract things like the 'law' or 'justice.' I'm not sure how to describe it. Anyway, when I was 8 or 9, they tore the courthouse down and put up a one story city government structure -- bascially an office park-type building -- and a very ugly one even for office park buildings. It was a traumatic experience for me. It just seemed so wrong -- to take something that was so rooted [Kanab is bounded on one side by red sandstone cliffs and all the dirt there is pink/red] in history and in the local landscape and was such a great symbol for what it was and destroy it.

It was major disillusioning experience for me. One of my first exposures to stupid people with power and money.

Anyway.

May you all find places that feed you positive energy. :)

[GreNME]

Slash, I think that the place had as much meaning as it did because I spent a good portion of my childhood there, so I was impressioned by the place. I knew it was "home" and belonged to the family. There were even a few crises, a tornado and a few dangerous animals on the loose, where "home" was not only a house, but the fortress against the dangers of the rest of the world. Once again, that it belonged to the family made it even more important.

Maybe owning a home will make a difference for you. Maybe not. Right now, I have no connection to any place, and don't expect to any time soon. Owning my own land and home in the future may change that, but I currently have no connection to any place any more, either. Maybe that'll change, maybe it won't.

[celia60]

Zal, in my darker moments I've wondered if my parents wouldn't have continued to lived happily ever after had they never had to bear the responsibility and expense of me. The rational me knows better than to think that my father would have let that happen, though, so I think that staying there would have just left us even worse off financially than we were after the divorce as it was.

[kwsni]

Wow. THis has hit me harder than I ever expected.

When i was born, my parents owned a house in the country, and I spent my first eight years running around in the woods, racing wagons down the hills, going to see the neighbors horses. We used to feed the cobs from our corn on the cob to the cows across the street.

When my parents got divorced, My mom moved out, and my sister and i moved wtih her. My dad remarried, and among other things that have probly scarred me for good, my Stepmother convinced my Dad to sell the house.

Both parents own houses now, but they're in the suburbs, and i don't feel any connection with the property at all. I want that house back more and more lately.

Ni!

[K.A.M.A.]

<-- communist, doesn't believe in private land ownership :P

[Starla*]

I know how you feel, Zal.

I guess I'll tell my friend Amanda's story first.

Her paternal grandparents opened a diner on the Black Horse Pike in Southern New Jersey back in the late fifties or early 60s. This diner has become known as "the waypoint of south Jersey"--Geet's. Geet was her grandfather's nickname, and the two rooms were named after her grandmother and her aunt. Her grandparents became ill after her father graduated college, so he took over the business. He ran it until the late 80s or early 90s, at which point he sold it. It's still called Geet's, but the rooms don't have names anymore.

Her parents moved to Wisconsin after she graduated high school. They wanted her to come with them and said they would pay for her schooling if she did, but she didn't want to leave Jersey just yet. She lived with her older sister and went to two colleges that weren't right for her. Last fall, being broke and just wanting to finish college, she applied to the University of Wisconsin, and was accepted for the spring semester. Her parents told her they would pick her up the day after Christmas.

A week before that, we went to Geet's to have dinner before we went to see LOTR. She talked about her memories of the place as a child (as did I, b/c my mom took us there a lot when we were very little). She was sad that it wasn't in the family any more, but was proud that the place is so famous. I never knew a person to say "Where's Geet's?" People in the area use it to give directions.

My story, which hasn't happened and may not, but probably will eventually:

My mother and father bought our house in 1980. They only planned to live in it for 5 or 6 years then get a better house. Well, they got divorced by that point. Mom kept the house, and a year after my parent's separation, my stepfather moved in. About 1988, he started working on our kitchen--a project that was supposedly completed in 1997, but now they want to replace the floor (again), the oven, and move the washer and dryer out. Since 1998, the rest of the house has been under reconstruction. All the bedrooms are redone, the bathroom, the living room is in pieces, the hallway, no more dining room. New front porch, new windows, new siding, new roof. If you can think of it, it's been redone. This weekend my parents are going to North Carolina to get 5 inch red oak floorboards for the entire bottom floor of the house. Did I mention the extra room on the back of the house?

Plus, there are a lot of personal touches to the house. My parents are big fans of woodwork (even on counter-tops, highly impractical)--and my sister drew designs she later traced and burned into the wood. Every baseboard under each window sill has a different design in it corresponding to the room--her room, celestial themed, has a sun and a moon on each side. Mine, a celtic theme, has st. Brigit's crosses. My parents, flora theme, have morning glories. The bathroom, ivy. The stairwell, celtic knots and flowers. The kitchen backsplashes: pine branches and cones, oak leaves and acorns, and a Primrose (My mother's and stepfather's last name) in the middle. The linen closet has an oak and acorn pattern down the sides, and the sections between the doors have pine cones.

Even the "gingerbread" trim. My sister designed and cut almost all the woodwork on the outside of the house--around the windows, across the front.

Not to mention the bulbs and the gardens. A lot of work has been put into this house by us, all of us. A lot of personal touches.

My parents' mortgage is pretty low. Two years ago, they said they were thinking about paying it off, then moving to Virginia or Tennessee in the mountains. They asked me if I would keep the house and pay the taxes for it. They didn't offer my sister, a chemical engineering major, because she wouldn't be able to find a job nearby. She doesn't really want the house, but she would hate to see it go to a stranger. She doesn't like our town that much, and thinks the house is too small to have children in (her plans for after graduate school :rolleyes: ).

I agreed, but reluctantly so. I was only 20 years old, and had big dreams of getting as far away from that town and that house. As much as it is home to me, I'm not very happy there right now. Like my sister, I would hate to see the house go to a stranger who would ruin our hard work. But at the same time, with rent prices as they are, why would I turn down a house that all I had to do was pay the taxes on it?

I don't think my parents are going to go that route now. I have a feeling they're going to stay in the house, so I can go and move where I want to someday. But, my parents aren't going to live forever--as much as I may want them to. Something will have to be done with the house. I guess I shouldn't be thinking about that, but what if? The house is close the the road--a busy road, might I add--and some jerk may just want to tear it down (though, with current laws, the lot is too small to build on). I don't know if I can deal with that. I have a feeling I am going to be the one who has to make that choice down the road--my sister is engaged to be married and she wants children. I have no such plans and no intention of marriage or children. Therefore, I will be less tied down. But by that point--I may be in my 50s, 60s, or even 70s, and may not mind settling down in my childhood home.

This also reminds me of the Franklin House, and old bar/hotel in my college town. There had been an inn there since the 1760s, but the structure was built around 1780. Three years ago, the place closed. Last year, they tore it down, despite efforts to save it.

Everyone I talked to, it seemed wrong to them. It had always been there. I took pictures--before, during and after. They built and new bar/nightclub there.

Yesterday, I went for a walk with a friend, and happened to pass by where the Franklin house had been. I drive by it everyday, but driving and walking seem to make things look different. I looked up and saw the new place, and it clicked that it didn't feel right at all. Not in the least bit.

Zal, as for your grandparents house--I'm really sorry. It feels like someone took one of your body parts or organs and decided to sell it on ebay. Naked, alone, without a root. It just sucks.

Sorry for my blathering, again.