A HOUSE BY THE SIDE OF THE ROAD . . .

I don't remember the house in the Bronx, i was too small. Just a vague memory of sitting on the stoop. But i remember so vividly the house of my grandparents to which i went to live my boyhood.

It was white clapboard, and the result of more than thirty years of improvement and expansion by my grandfather. The family story was that he bought a four-room bungalo for a song (don't know which tune) and then he and his future brother-in-law jacked up the sleepers, dug a space beneath for a basement, and laid courses of brick for the foundation, pouring a concrete floor for the basement. Into this he put a coal-fired furnace, very modern in 1919, with a coal chute and bin. In winter, he would bank the fire at night and stoke it before dawn. He also added the radical inovation of an electric blower to circulate the heat.

On the front was a gallery, which he enclosed, putting a door, and six sash windows facing the street, and a sash window at either end. There was a small porch at the side, which he also enclosed. There was a pump to raise water from an artesian well he had had dug at great expense, which brought the water to within a dozen yards or so of the surface. Armstrong energy was required to get it up to the surface and your pail. Even though water from the town was piped in long before i was born, we still pumped the well water for drinking and cooking, using the city water only for baths and the washing.

My grandfather and his brother-in-law (he was by then married) added a second story, with two bedrooms, turning the house into a four bedroom house. All of the floors were hardwood, and they built a beautiful hardwood staircase with bannister. My grandmother was partial to cherrywood, and they acquired over the years a cherry breakfront, drop-leaf dining room table with eight matching chairs, a folding cherry rocking chair, all of which chairs my grandmother upholstered with forest green satin. She had a Singer foot-treadle sewing machine, and my grandfather built her a stand for it of cherrywood, to which the sewing machine was attached on a collapsible plate which folded into the sewing stand. It had a drop-leaf for the material to lie on, and four drawers for her sewing materials, and he replaced the foot-treadle with an electric motor. She was the first woman in the county (so she claimed) with an electric sewing machine. The walls were plaster and lathe, and they got a fresh coat of white lead every two years--as did the clapboard on the outside. We painted half of the inside and half of the outside every year.

The yard had two bartlett pear trees, intended by my grandmother as ornamentals (meaning we could eat all the pears we wanted, but had to pick them up and throw them out to do the mowing in the autumn). Their bark is such a dark brown that spring rains turn it black, and with the white blossoms, they are quite striking. There was box hedge on the street, and on the north side at a right angle. On the south side, next to the railroad right of way was a terrace, separated from the yard by a white picket fence, which also got a coat of white lead every other year. It was lined with snowball bushes on the inside. At the south corner of the enclosed front porch was a trellis up which my grandmother trained tea roses. Rose bushes filled the spaces in the corners of the house elsewhere. I loved to play next to the coal chute on the north side (even though i'd get in trouble for getting dirty) because of the lilies-of-the-valley, which like shade and thrived in the coal dust rich soil. This was opposite the row of lilac bushes on the north edge of the property--for me, spring time is the smell of lilacs and the tiny, waxy flowers of the lily-of-the-valley.

In the back were the sheds my grandfather had built for his tools and for storing food grown in the half-acre garden. There was also a miniature house, perfect in all details with small sash windows which he had built for his twin daughters. There was a cherry tree, peach tree, a golden delicious apple tree and two grape arbors.

We lived a good life, and worked to keep our home comfortable and beautiful, and as children, we complained of the work and did not appreciate how good we had it. Life within the house was not always so charming, but the mere atmosphere was healthy and positive. I doubt i will ever have such a home again.