The house I grew up in, in Staples doesn’t exist anymore.
It’s just an empty parking lot now. But on the corner of that lot is a lonely
survivor. A lilac bush, that was there when I was living there. It was the one my baseball always got
caught up in when the front yard was a ball field. It was the last thing I
passed on my way to school and the first thing I passed on the way home. It
bloomed for a few weeks in the spring but otherwise there was nothing
significant about it when I lived there. Now it’s all that is left to remind me
of the dozen years or so it was part of my home.
It’s been over fifty years since I walked down that dirt
driveway and caught a bus to Minneapolis and five times as much time has
passed, as when I lived there. Fifty years of working and raising kids of my
own with my loving wife. Something still draws me to that place more than
anywhere else I ever lived. I go stand by that bush when I’m in Staples and
close my eyes and I can still picture that old house and all of the people who
called it home.
Was it because it was such a beautiful place? No. By today’s
standards it was a shack. Was it because it was so comfortable? No it wasn’t
that comfortable. Not with two
adults and eight kids in a three-bedroom house with one bathroom. A wood
furnace that went out at night and we left the faucets running to keep the
pipes from freezing. I’m not going to bore you with what it was like to be
poor, I just wanted you to know that in that house was something money couldn’t
buy and something I could never forgot. For you see it’s not the house that
mattered at all, it was the family that lived within those walls that I can’t
forget. They tore down that house, save for that bush in the corner, but what I
remember and what I am writing about will never be forgotten because I remember
the home that was there.
House’s are just bricks, mortar, boards and nails. Homes are
life it’s self. Every emotion you’re capable of came out of that home. Houses
need to be cared for, painted, caulked and reroofed. Homes are with you as long
as you live. You emulate the good home you had there no matter where you live.
I drive around the countryside a lot and I see people who live in rundown homes
and dilapidated trailers. Your first inclination is to feel sorry for them but
then you remember that it’s what inside that shelter that is so important and
in many ways, they may be happier then those who live in the mansions on the
high bluffs of Whitefish Lake.
Mom and Dad are gone now but all eight of us kids are still
here. We get together once a year in the summer time and poke fun at each
other. I always look beyond the gray hair and wrinkles when we meet and into
the eyes. Your eyes never change and they betray your emotions so well. They sparkle
when you’re happy and well up and spill over when you are sad. They are the
conduit for seeing and storing virtually ever memory we keep. That’s why when I
go and stand by that old lilac bush and close my eyes. I still see and feel,
what I saw, so many years ago.
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