The little house on Henderson Street

During this pandemic, I am fortunate enough to be able to work from home, usually sitting at my dining room table. I have the window behind me open, I can smell the flowers in my back yard and can hear the birds singing and traffic off in the distance. The stillness and tranquility remind me of summer mornings spent with my great-grandmother Marie. My Mom left for work in the morning and I traipsed across the street to my great-grandparents' house, a small gray wood frame abode with 5 rooms and sloping floors. The pier and beam floor needed shoring up badly, so you could set a ball on the floor and it would roll all the way to the back of the house. There were steps that led up to the front porch where my great-grandfather Marvin liked to sit in his wheelchair, then a small front room with two recliners that reeked of vanilla pipe smoke; a bedroom with two twin beds and a dresser; and a small bathroom with a claw foot tub. The kitchen was at the very back of the house, then as you walked back toward the front, there was a tiny dining room with a table and a hutch; then "the parlor", the front-facing, more formal room where Granny and Grandad played 42 with Aunt Lizzie and other family celebrations were held.

Grandad sat in his recliner, watching TV and smoking his pipe, while Granny and I retreated to the kitchen to make breakfast. I sat at the small table by the open window while Granny made me some Johnny cakes or oatmeal. She sat down with me and her coffee and we would listen to the CBS Radio Mystery Theater on a small radio. Granny enjoyed listening to the radio. She would open the back door if it wasn't too hot outside and the fruity fragrance of the plum trees in the back yard would fill the kitchen. The curtains had a yellow haze of pipe smoke that muted the bright sunlight outside. I spent a lot of time with Granny and Grandad in that little house, right up until Grandad died in May 1975. Mom and I would walk across the street every Sunday evening to have dinner with them and then watch the Ed Sullivan Show. Grandad watched me ride my bike in the street out front, hollering when a car turned onto Henderson Street: "Git outta the street! A car's a-comin'!"

After Grandad died of a stroke, Mom and I moved back to the apartments that we had lived in before. Granny decided that she didn't want to live in the house all alone, so Mom arranged to get her an apartment near ours. She stayed there for a few years, then moved back to their old neighborhood to live in a duplex with her friend. She lived there until I was 15 years old and died in 1980. I regret that I was too young to ask Grandad about his childhood, but Granny told me quite a bit about hers. I loved listening to her stories about her mother Mattie and her beloved father Jeff.

I think that my interest in genealogies and family history started with those stories about life in the "old days". I marveled that my great-grandfather's family had come to Texas from Virginia in the late 1800s on a wagon, but he lived lived long enough to see man walk on the moon. Young people should ask their elders about their lives; where they grew up, what their childhood dreams were, what historical events they lived through. Many kids nowadays will be able to tell their children that they lived through Ye Olde Great Covid-19 Pandemic of 2020.

Don't let your family stories die without telling them. It's the best way to link the past with present and the future.