OK, I’ve already missed the Friday deadline for Flashback Friday (inspired by and I believe started by Mrs. Deputy over at Family Behind His Badge) (Today, scratch that: this week has been crazy busy)…but I’m going to eek it in.
My flash back photo:
This is a photograph of my most favorite place in the world. It was my grandparent’s home in northern Minnesota, where my brother and I spent most of our childhood summers (we were shipped away every year when school broke so that my parents didn’t have to take off work).
I appreciate it much more now that I’m older than I likely did when I was actually living the moment. But, this old house and plot of land imprinted a lot of love if not need for nostalgia.
The little town was very much like Mayberry USA – only, you know, northern. This plot of land where the house stands was the homestead of my ancestors. Originally a little log cabin stood there, and a modest farm. My great-great-grandfather and great-great-grandmother came to this country from Sweden and settled there before Minnesota gained statehood. They dealt with landclaims, Indian attacks, etc.
Eventually the land he owned was divided among his sons, which stretched far and wide, keeping only the original homestead for himself. The house that is in the picture is a Sears Kit House…people would order their homes via a Sears Catalog and everything – right down to the last nail – would be shipped to the nearest train station…and you’d have your neighbors, friends and family help construct the home.
This was passed on to his only surviving daughter, who passed it on to my grandfather. It remained in our family until sometime in the mid 2000s shortly following my grandmother’s (then a widow) injury from a car accident. She just couldn’t keep up with all that an old house required…and there was a concern over her children fighting over who would get the property. She didn’t want them to have this to cause animosity between them. Sadly, she sold the property with the intention of what was left over after her death to be divided between her three kids…and one child took advantage of her financial nest egg before she died and none of her children are on speaking terms anyway.
Happier moments of my life were spent there – and oddly for as much as I wanted company, my best times were spent in solitude. It was my grandmother who introduced us to visiting libraries with regularity and I would take my little books, climb a tree whose hefty trunk grew nearly horizontally over the lake you see there in the back ground, and read. I don’t know if it developed a love of reading, persay, but it did develop a love of daydreaming. She also introduced me to “the theater” (which was really a small troupe there in town on a very small stage), and that also increased my daydreaming of being an actress. What little girl doesn’t dream of being on stage, acting? That didn’t come to realization at home, but I have a feeling had I been allowed to stay there I would have been encouraged to try.
My grandparents owned and operated a small lakeside resort. That’s one of the cabins you see in the left of the photograph. It used to be such fun waiting for guests…I’d help my grandmother clean out the cabins which to me seemed like perfect play houses…and wonder if the guests were going to have kids our age and if they’d like to play. I was a shy kid, but when there’s so few kids around to play, and you are away from peer groups, it is easier to reach out and be received. I remember making up the name Lilly for myself (inspired by reading the real Peter Pan story…I loved Tiger Lilly, from whose name I was inspired) and a little girl visitor knocking on my grandmother’s door asking to play with Lilly…and how embarrassed I was that I was caught in a lie. I made a horrible lie up about how my grandmother just couldn’t remember my name.
Next door to my grandmother’s property was neighbor’s whose grandchildren lived in Miami and would overlap their visits with our own. There was a little girl named Maria that I would play with – and a little boy named Andy that my brother would play with. I remember us all putting pup-tents up in my Grandmother’s massively huge yard and then decorating the interiors as spaceships…inspired by the Star Wars hubub that broke out that year. In fact, I saw Star Wars in the theater while I was in that little town. And a couple of the Indiana Jones movies. Those, too, led to my habit of daydreaming about far off places. And, the Indiana Jones movies inspired another desire to travel far off on archeological digs…a job I desired was to become a photographer for National Geographic.
I have just a jumbled mix of memories – I operated an ice-cream shop one summer (the year Pudding Pops came out was h.u.g.e!), I won 1st prize at the county fair’s cake decorating contest (I’ll have to search for the picture of that cake for a future Friday Flashback). I remember being afraid of my grandfather’s gruffness, but being completely in love with him one night where we stayed up until the sun rose, sitting on the little bench in the entry way. I remember how awful the outhouse smelled, but how lovely it looked, all painted white with Grandma’s beautiful flowers crawling up the side and the purple glass door knobs (when they tore the place down, I actually took the door knob…it’s waiting for my own 1st house to be placed once again on a door). I remember jumping off of docks, feeding geese, being assigned fish cleaning and being guilted into trying Lutefisk by my Grandfather (think Fish Jello). I remember the stick swing and the old tire swing my grandfather hung for us. I remember loving when my aunt and uncle would visit, and staying up late their first night watching the Twilight Zone with them…and completely being unaware that anywhere else in the world knew of the program…it would about my 12th/13th year when I happened to catch it on late night at home and being surprised about it. I remember snacks of butter and saltine crackers. I remember fried fish for breakfast (not being a fish lover myself, I wasn’t totally thrilled). And the grass…I remember the place had the softest, greenest grass I have ever seen anywhere.
Here in town, you can’t find houses that old or that beautiful in the country for sale. You have to go into the historic district places for anything close – and by close I don’t mean style, but made up of things like wood siding, or porches, or wood floors and framed windows. I’m trying to capture just a little bit of the time I felt happy and apart from my parents but a part of something historical at the same time. A lot of this old house and these feelings and memories associated with it are part of my process of elimination when looking for a home of our own.
