The Big House

In the spring of 1963, right before my fifth birthday, my parents purchased the Big House. It sat on a plot of land of three and a half acres running between the main road in the area and a dead-end street the housed the local elementary school. The house was a three storied stone structure. Across the main road was your typical suburban development. The properties on either side were both multiple acres, one being a working farm – they were good neighbors. Surrounding the house were nine outbuildings with varying uses and mostly in poor condition.

Years earlier, the land was a dairy farm. In the most recent years, an absentee landlord used it as a rental property.

Our First View

Chicken wire fenced off the back portion of the property It seemed to be serving primarily as a dumping ground for household waste. The back northwest corner was a dense thicket of overgrown brush and scrap trees. The rest of the property sported a few fruit trees and a fair number of well-established trees, such as ash and linden and birch (not that I knew any of their names at that early age). No doubt my parents wandered all over the property prior to my first sight of it, as Dad had plenty of plans for his eventual gardening areas. Those would have to wait until we dealt with some major issues in the house itself first.

My only clear memory of my first view of the house, prior to moving day, was looking into the kitchen window from the back porch and seeing a mouse running along a small ledge near the stove – to my mother’s credit, she did not scream, though I seem to recall my father laughing. The kitchen hadn’t been used in years and it showed. A smaller kitchen on the second floor served the previous tenant.

The first major project at the Big House involved ripping up multiple layers of aged linoleum from that kitchen’s floor. A new concrete slab and a tile floor replaced the old flooring. My brother and I didn’t get to partake in that particular adventure as we went to stay with our grandparents that week.

There were many projects during the first few years we lived there, but that’s not the primary purpose for talking about the property, but most of that will have to wait for a bit.