What is the mythic hold that "home" holds over us? Is this a development of the modern era, or does it go all the way back to the caveman? Did coming back to that rock abode and the lingering smell of last night's dinner roasted over the fire inspire the same sense of comfort and safety in those family members that stepping in the back door to our favorite Scentsy aroma does now? I don't see how it could, but then, we all have a concept of what home should be like, from our own frame of reference. I think, however, that it must be part of the human condition to crave a domestic haven from the vagaries of life.
Forty years ago this past June, our family moved into what has remained home base for us all. It was two years in the making, because Mom and Dad were determined that everything down to the last nail would be paid for before it was put in. I might be wrong, but I think they met that goal. It's not a terribly remarkable house, but to me, it's an icon of peace. The story of it is almost as much a part of me as are the sights, sounds, and smells I associate with it.
This pinkish-brick split level stands at the corner of the section my great-grandfather John Welker acquired when he traded the land he staked in the Land Run, somewhere in Payne or Noble county, just a short time after the Run. The house was built by Henry Martin and Ted Osborn, highly skilled homebuilders and craftsmen who were also neighbors and customers. Dad asked Henry several times to build the house, but he had too much on his plate to work it in. But a freak hailstorm wiped out his wheat crop, and he took the job to make up for that loss. I don't know the time frame for sure, but that must have been around 1970. And another local, Loyd Wilson, built all the cabinetry for the house. Mom and Dad did and still do take pride in doing business locally whenever possible, a policy they passed on to us all.
The thing that amazes me the most is that Mom stained and varnished almost every square inch of the woodwork in the house---cabinets, paneling, baseboard, EVERYthing. That includes two full bathrooms and two half baths, a paneled kitchen and family room, half-paneled hallways, built-ins for a sewing counter, the office, and a rec room, and partial paneling in the basement, plus the doors for three bedrooms, the office, three pocket doors, and nine closets....a virtual lumberyard of wood that looks as beautiful today as it did when we moved in. She cared for it religiously; that might have been our best lesson on why we don't let things get torn up or trashed. I would feel physically ill if I ever did something to damage that golden-brown evidence of her painstaking care and pride of her home. Of course she painted, but I've also seen her fix plumbing and electrical issues, large and small. There well may be many other things she did as part of creating this home; her father was a carpenter, and she knew a lot from him, as well as teaching herself.
Grandad was still working when this house was built, and with Pryor 100 miles away, he wasn't able to do a lot, but I recently learned of a contribution he made that solved a mystery for me. The main level is the only one with floor joists; everything else is concrete. But that main level is just as sturdy as the rest, producing almost no noise, even though several of us walk very hard on our heels. At Christmas, my brother told my brother-in-law that the floor joists were 3" x 16". Now I'm no craftman, but I've seen a little bit of carpentry done over the years, and I didn't even KNOW such a thing existed. They don't; these mammoth slabs of wood were part of the old powder plant at Pryor, where Grandad worked during World War II, and they came to us through him. No one knows how he got hold of them----maybe he helped with the demolition of the plant or got them from a friend. However it came about, those massive planks, which took several men to move, have left that floor as strong and level as it ever was. If I didn't have a terror of damp, dark, close spaces and the critters that lurk there, I'd love to crawl up under there to see them.
Another feature I find unusual, and unusually comforting, is the concrete floor upstairs----of course, that means it's practically a concrete bunker down in the basement. That basement is partially above ground, with windows at ground level, and a patio door at the end, but I've never felt afraid there during a storm....and out there on the eastern edge of the open plains, we've had more than a few brushes with tornadoes and ferocious straight-line winds. I don't know exactly how Dad managed to get this cement ceiling done, but he's a master of plotting, planning, and devising. Bo says he remembers it, and that there were posts all over the basement holding up some kind of forms or framework they used to pour the cement in. And he would know: he was a busy little boy, just four years old when we moved in, and he had spent his days down there during the previous two years, tinkering and building and telling wild stories that even now Henry will smile and shake his head at when he recalls them. My clearest memories of those two years were pushing a chair up to the sink when I got home from school to wash Mom and Dad's lunch dishes (which were really pretty minimal) and standing on the back patio, possibly singing and dancing, a pasture of cattle for an audience. I might have just dreamed doing that, but I have a sharp vision of standing on that patio imagining I finally had a real stage, consciously thinking it would be a great place to perform from while I waited for a glorious career to arrive.
I remember, too, the first meal we had after moving in that June: we had hot dogs from our microwave, the likes of which I'd never seen or heard of, but was in awe of. And we got to watch _Gunsmoke_ on our brand-new color TV while we ate. It was maybe somewhat less than miraculous, but if I remember it so well after 40 years, how can I overlook that? How can I put aside all that house came to mean to me? The smell of the air conditioning in the summer was and still is unlike any other on earth. The sound of the back door and how we jerked it closed, or the muffled sound of the grinder at the elevator on Saturday mornings from my childhood bedroom; the texture of the wallpaper Mom and I hung in the entry, up the stairs, and in the hall when I was 16 (and that I threatened to run away over because she's such a perfectionist); the long-outdated but still functional green kitchen countertops----I could identify them all, anywhere they were presented to me. I spent God only knows how many hours practicing at that piano in the corner of the living room, where my 18-year-old nephew Logan has plunked, then played, then performed as he grew up. Every once in a while, I look at the marble hearth in front of the fireplace and can remember standing at the teller counter in the old First National Bank building in Pawnee, where that marble came from when they tore the building down. I remember Dad and I sharing a nightly popcorn ritual, popping it up in a Wagner Ware saucepan, never asking if the other wanted it, just wordlessly presenting the other with a bowlful passed through the cabinet window into the family room. There is no way to separate all that from my person----or from my home.
When Mom and Dad announced a few years ago that they were moving out and that Sheri would be living there permanently, that they would mostly live in Arkansas, I was devastated. I think my exact words were, "But I won't have a home anymore?" definitely stated as a question. One of them, I don't remember which, said, "You have a home. Your home is in Broken Arrow." Logic was not what I was after----I just wanted to know that I had the home base I had come back to all my life. I needed the safety of that physical place, but also the feeling of "home" by having everyone there together. I've learned to live with the reality that we haven't all been together on a regular basis in 25 years except at Christmas, and that what home represents isn't something that changes just because the situation is a little different. I sleep in a different room when I visit---but that was true long ago. My sister and her husband are so gracious with me, letting me come to stay whenever I want, that I haven't felt as torn as I was afraid I might. Our figurative campfires are still lit, and I am still welcome. That's more grace than many people ever get, and I've had it all my life, and I am so thankful.
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