The Big House - Part 1

In the spring of 1963, right before my fifth birthday, my parents purchased the Big House, a plot of land of three and a half acres running between the main road in the area and a deadend street the housed the local elementary school. The house was a three storied stone structure. Across the main road was your typical suburban development, while the properties on either side were both multiple acres, one being a working farm - they were good neighbors. Surrounding the house were nine outbuildings with varying uses and mostly in poor condition. The land had once been a dairy farm, though in the most recent years, had been a rental property owned by an absentee landlord. THe back portion of the property had been fenced off with chicken wire and seemed to be serving priarily as a dumping ground for household waste. The back northwest corner was a dense thicket of overgrown brush and scrap trees, but the rest of the property sported a few fruit trees and a fair number of well-established trees, such as ash and linden and birch (not that I knew any of their names at that early age. No doubt my parents had wandered all over the property prior to my first sight of it, as Dad had plenty of plans for his eventual gardening areas, though those would have to wait until some major issues were dealt with in the house itself first.

My only clear memory of my first view of the house, prior to moving day, was looking into the kitchen window from the back porch and seeing a mouse running along a small ledge near the stove - to my mother's credit, she did not scream, though I seem to recall my father laughing. At that point in time, the kitchen hadn't been used in years and it showed - all cooking was done in a smaller kitchen on the second floor. The first major project at the Big House involved ripping up multple layers of aged linoleum from that kitchen's floor, to be replaced by a new concrete slab and a tile floor. My brother and I didn't get to partake in that particular adventure as we were dispatched to the care of one of our grandmothers for the week while the demolition was taking place.

There were many projects during the first few years we lived there, but that's not the primary purpose for talking about the property, but most of that will have to wait for a bit.