Home.

Everyone who sees the house I grew up in falls in love with it. I guess it’s pretty special to me too. I always dreamed that one day I would have a house similar to it, only one story. I grew up in a pretty good sized log cabin. If that house could talk….


When you first pull into the horseshoe drive way, you are greeted by a pack of dogs ready to lick you to death and a cat that will most certainly be decorating your car with paw prints in the dust you have accumulated from going down the dirt road. We were never ones to let you make it to the front door to knock unless it’s Saturday and we were sleeping in. No, we would come out to greet you and help you make it in before you were completely bathed with doggie sugars.

Up the great rock steps and onto the wooden wraparound porch you would step where there is an inviting porch swing or a rocker. Whichever tickled your fancy? If it’s nice we would hang out on the porch or go inside and cool off or warm up.
When you step inside on the rock entry, you are greeted even further with Mama’s thrifty find of what looks like a mauled skunk that looks like it’s trying to run down the beam it is on. Bless her heart, she thinks he’s cute. There is a bar to put your things on and a spacious living room wrapped all around with rock. You can see upstairs into the loft and the window up there shines a beam of light into the welcoming living room. I used to stand there and watch the dust particles float through it. A dusty road leads to a dusty house. Mama says if you wipe something off and come back in 5 minutes, you will have to wipe it off again.

Mama loves her candles and burns them when she can. It usually smells like vanilla or apple pie. There was never a room left untouched by Mama’s decorating hands. The whole house is decorated in western theme with a dash of sentimentality. Great Grandpa’s bayonets on the wall and Daddy’s largo statues sit on the coffee table. It feels very homey and rustic. If my sister and I were home, we would be running down the stairs to go play outside. We hardly came home clean. Mud pies and looking for frogs and four leaf clovers. That’s what this little blonde and red head girl would get into.
When we got a little older and the hair pulling started so we got our own rooms. Mine was painted blue and my sisters purple. There were Grand Champion horses everywhere. Sis was more into Barbies. Daddy was fixing the North Wall of the house for a while and had a ladder that he left positioned by my bedroom. One of our barn cats would climb up it during the summer and eat cat food that I would bring upstairs and place on my window ledge. To think that if my Dad did that now, it probably would cause more concern than back then.

I don’t think it’s ever quiet except for in the winter. You hear cars go by on the road, frogs and crickets at night lulling everyone to sleep. There is no attic just a roof so when it rains, you get to hear the pitter patter or the thundering sounds of sheets of rain. When the wind blows, the whole house creaks. Sometimes when we don’t have rain for a long time the roof shrinks up. The problem is there gets to be a few holes and we have to dig out a couple of pots, but when it gets good again the holes go away.

There’s a fireplace for the winter and a great big swimming pool for the summer. We had a couple of horses for a spell. Nature was right at our back porch and sometimes on the front. The tales that porch could tell…. We had our share of pets growing up which lead us to having our own graveyard. Daddy would never tell us where. We just knew they would live the rest of their days playing together in the pasture.

We always had some event planned. Two couples were married there. Countless family get togethers and pool parties. Pickin and grinnin’s, birthday parties, and fourth of Julys were all thrown. There was never a dull moment in our house. It was full of love, laughter, togetherness, and friendship. I can only hope that one day when I have children, that their childhood will be filled with some of the same joys.

~Kalamity