A Tale of Four Houses
Feb. 12th, 2006 03:31 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
morrigirlWhen I was growing up my maternal grandparents owned three houses down in Pensacola, Florida. 3, 5, and 9 West Lloyd Street. My grandparents lived in Number 9, my Uncle Mike lived in Number 3, and Number 5 was kept empty so Mom and I would have some place to stay when we went to visit them every summer. I spent every summer from birth to the year I turned 14 running between those three houses, exploring their garages and digging holes in their front yards. There was an old abandoned elementary school building across the street. It took up the entire block. All the windows were broken out, some were boarded up. The bicks were covered with grafitti. It was a wonderful play ground.
My grandmother died in 1989 and in 1994 my grandfather's mental capacity deminished to such a degree that we had to put him in a nursing home. After that Mom and Uncle Mike decided to put Number 9 up for sale. I remember going down there with my mother for a week when I was 15 and emptying out the house. We sorted through all the furniture and figurines, all the records and clothing. Most of it was sold or given to charity. I set aside a few pieces of furniture I wanted, a chair, two large colorful lamps that had been my great-grandmother's, and the large broken grandfather clock that sat in my grandparents living room for as long as I could remember. All the items were stored in the Number 5 garage. In subsequent years Numbers 3 and 5 were rented out on a regular basis and Mom got a small amount of money from that.
Then 2004 hit and with it came hurricane Ivan. Ivan wrought havoc upon 3 and 5. Tore off huge chunks of their roofs and ripped up the garages. The damage was so extensive Mom and Uncle Mike decided it would be in their best interests to just sell the houses because they didn't have the money to fix them. The houses were finally sold at the beginning of this year, so over January she went down to Pensacola to sort through what little was left of the Number 5 garage and ship everything she wanted to keep up back up here. My mother was able to salvage some of her old dolls, but the boxes containing their clothing had disappeared. My grandmother's china as well as her china cabinets were still intact. Mom shipped those back along with my great-grandmother's vanity table. The chair and the lamps I had wanted for myself were destroyed and the grandfather clock had been co-opted by my Uncle and now sits in his living room. The only thing left for me was my doll house.
When I was still a baby my grandma had a one of a kind doll house designed for me. It always lived at her house because we didn't have enough room for it up here. It was one of the best things about going to Pensacola in the summer. We packed it up in the garage when Number 9 was sold. I carefully wrapped all the doll furniture in paper towels and put them in a cardboard box. Both the doll house and the furniture survived Ivan.
Mom's mass shipment of Florida stuff arrived this past Friday. When I entered her apartment that afternoon the first thing I saw was my doll house sitting on the dining room floor. It looks so much bigger than I remember it. True, it's 42 and a half inches wide and 27 and a half inches tall, but it never seemed so massive when I was young, which initially struck me as odd since items that seem big when we're little tend to appear smaller the older we get. But my Brother Mike put it in perspective by reminding me that my doll house was always kept in the Big Studio and everything looked small in there. What's the Big Studio, you ask? Well, my grandmother was a ballet teacher and for over twenty years she taught out of her house. She had a gigantic dance studio built onto the back. She was retired by the time I came along and the Big Studio turned into an all purpose play room for her grandchildren. The space my doll house took up in that room was minescule compared to the amount of room it takes up in my mother's dining room.
I hadn't seen my doll house in over ten years. It looked much dirtier, the white paint on the outside having turned to grey thanks to years of soot and rain, but it was still beautiful. I barely had my coat off before I was in the kitchen gathering paper towels. I sat down and started cleaning it up room by room. I threw out old crunchy insect eggs that had been laid in the curtains, I picked lint off the carpet, I tried to scrub the grime out of the bath tub but it was set so deep in the porcelain I couldn't. I dusted the front porch, discovered three of the four pillars in the front were loose, was awed at how small I felt next to it.
I haven't started putting the furniture back into it yet because it doesn't have a permanent home. Mom wants to have my brother Greg build a new table specifically for it since none of the surfaces in her apartment are big enough for it and there isn't enough room for it in my apartment. But when it finally does get it's own little corner I'm going to glue and repair and decorate the hell out of it. Now it's all I have left of those houses on Lloyd Street.
My grandmother died in 1989 and in 1994 my grandfather's mental capacity deminished to such a degree that we had to put him in a nursing home. After that Mom and Uncle Mike decided to put Number 9 up for sale. I remember going down there with my mother for a week when I was 15 and emptying out the house. We sorted through all the furniture and figurines, all the records and clothing. Most of it was sold or given to charity. I set aside a few pieces of furniture I wanted, a chair, two large colorful lamps that had been my great-grandmother's, and the large broken grandfather clock that sat in my grandparents living room for as long as I could remember. All the items were stored in the Number 5 garage. In subsequent years Numbers 3 and 5 were rented out on a regular basis and Mom got a small amount of money from that.
Then 2004 hit and with it came hurricane Ivan. Ivan wrought havoc upon 3 and 5. Tore off huge chunks of their roofs and ripped up the garages. The damage was so extensive Mom and Uncle Mike decided it would be in their best interests to just sell the houses because they didn't have the money to fix them. The houses were finally sold at the beginning of this year, so over January she went down to Pensacola to sort through what little was left of the Number 5 garage and ship everything she wanted to keep up back up here. My mother was able to salvage some of her old dolls, but the boxes containing their clothing had disappeared. My grandmother's china as well as her china cabinets were still intact. Mom shipped those back along with my great-grandmother's vanity table. The chair and the lamps I had wanted for myself were destroyed and the grandfather clock had been co-opted by my Uncle and now sits in his living room. The only thing left for me was my doll house.
When I was still a baby my grandma had a one of a kind doll house designed for me. It always lived at her house because we didn't have enough room for it up here. It was one of the best things about going to Pensacola in the summer. We packed it up in the garage when Number 9 was sold. I carefully wrapped all the doll furniture in paper towels and put them in a cardboard box. Both the doll house and the furniture survived Ivan.
Mom's mass shipment of Florida stuff arrived this past Friday. When I entered her apartment that afternoon the first thing I saw was my doll house sitting on the dining room floor. It looks so much bigger than I remember it. True, it's 42 and a half inches wide and 27 and a half inches tall, but it never seemed so massive when I was young, which initially struck me as odd since items that seem big when we're little tend to appear smaller the older we get. But my Brother Mike put it in perspective by reminding me that my doll house was always kept in the Big Studio and everything looked small in there. What's the Big Studio, you ask? Well, my grandmother was a ballet teacher and for over twenty years she taught out of her house. She had a gigantic dance studio built onto the back. She was retired by the time I came along and the Big Studio turned into an all purpose play room for her grandchildren. The space my doll house took up in that room was minescule compared to the amount of room it takes up in my mother's dining room.
I hadn't seen my doll house in over ten years. It looked much dirtier, the white paint on the outside having turned to grey thanks to years of soot and rain, but it was still beautiful. I barely had my coat off before I was in the kitchen gathering paper towels. I sat down and started cleaning it up room by room. I threw out old crunchy insect eggs that had been laid in the curtains, I picked lint off the carpet, I tried to scrub the grime out of the bath tub but it was set so deep in the porcelain I couldn't. I dusted the front porch, discovered three of the four pillars in the front were loose, was awed at how small I felt next to it.
I haven't started putting the furniture back into it yet because it doesn't have a permanent home. Mom wants to have my brother Greg build a new table specifically for it since none of the surfaces in her apartment are big enough for it and there isn't enough room for it in my apartment. But when it finally does get it's own little corner I'm going to glue and repair and decorate the hell out of it. Now it's all I have left of those houses on Lloyd Street.
