Standing On The Porch

As I stood on the small concrete porch in front of the still green wooden door, I thought of all of the time that had passed since I crossed the threshold into this white stucco house on Howard Street that I used to call home. At my last crossing I was but a small for my age eight year old with a classic crew cut from the neighborhood barbershop with its red and white revolving cylinder that captivated my attention each time I passed through the doors. When I last departed from the Howard Street house, I did not know that it would be my last time in the interior that had provided the experiences of my early years.

The middle class house in the middle class neighborhood had three bedrooms. The middle bedroom, not even the largest, was the domain of my parents with a bed that then seemed so large and was always covered with a while bedspread with its patterned pill like balls that held my fascination on many a day. That was the bed in which I spend much of the first two weeks of public school as I recovered from pneumonia before sharing the sickness with my mother. One of the other rooms was my sister’s filled with her dolls and toys. The final bedroom was share with my brother who undoubtedly originally viewed me as an invader into the space that had been his own private area. We had twin beds and nightstands with lamps that rose out of a black horseshoe base. It was in that room that my father first told us the stories of the mystical dog, that was name “Scissors” (and I wonder what the name would have been had there been something other than a pair of scissors on the nightstand the night of the first story).

The house had but one bathroom and, like other families of that era, we had the lines and waits that don’t exist as much in these days of instant gratification. Back then, it simply was the way of the world. The bathroom was decorated in dominating while tiles with occasional inserts of black and pinkish or yellow walls. It was in that room that I shared the baths with my sister and brother, then just my brother until I finally had that white porcelain tub to myself. The bath always was filled with toys that made me stay until my fingers and hands wrinkled like a old man. There were tug boats and a baking powder powered submarine and when all else was gone, there were the soap contests as I tried to see how far the snapped bar of soap could go around the tub before losing power and careening into the by then cloudy water. Finally, when there were no more excuses for remaining in the water and the water had long since passed the enjoyable temperature phase, there was the treat of watch the water form a tornado funnel before it slurped its way into nothingness.

The stairway leading to the first floor had a window to the adult world that allowed me, sometimes with my brother and sister, to watch the adult events that were supposedly beyond the hours that we could function. My pre-event work of loading the cigarettes into the silver cups or boxes had been accomplished, and I had tasted everything that seemed interesting to my young palette. I had been fed, bathed, dressed in my pajamas – in the summer the ones that looked like a baseball uniform and in the winter the red flannel ones with cowboys or other designs and feet with white plastic soles, and put in bed. I then would tiptoe down the steps to the window and, until I was ushered off to bed once again, I would watch the adults mingling and do one of the activities of the night – sometimes just dinner and sometime playing bridge – but always there were smiles and laughter.

Near the first floor, the stairs turned left into the living room or right into the kitchen. It was a magnificent kitchen in my eyes filled with so much to enjoy. When I was a toddler, the lower cupboards held musical instruments in the form of pots, pans and lids. At the far end was the eating nook where morning and afternoon meals were enjoyed as we looked out to the backyard. The smells of my youth filled and emanated from that kitchen especially Shabbat dinners of chick and potatoes, and Sunday’s dinner of lamb chops or steak with French fries. And there never has been any smell that could create the excitement of the wafting smells of fresh chocolate chip cookies or bars that also meant that fresh uncooked cookie dough would be waiting.

Almost every evening, we shared dinner in the dining room situated right off the kitchen toward the front of the house. It was in that room that we enjoyed our Shabbat meals with the lighting of the Sabbath candles that gave off light for the remainder of the evening, the blessing were chanted over the wine in my father’s silver cup form which I was allowed just the smallest of sips, and the Challah prayer was said as the last step to enjoying the weekly feast. Only on Sunday did we eat diner in the living room where we eat on TV tables watched Disney or Ed Sullivan on one of the most recent models of television then available – first black and white and then the first in the neighborhood color TV (all because my father worked for a Philco distributor).

It was in the dining room that my father unveiled his surprise Valentine present for the family as he lifted from a box a beautiful black pug puppy that was promptly given the name “Scissors”. Scissors was a delightful companion and, although I don’t believe I ever fed or walked Scissors, he gave me hours of enjoyment until he finally lost his wrestling match with a car driving down our street – he caught the car, but the car got the better of him. The living room was where we shared hours of family fun from listening to music, especially the wonderful history of American music collection that we received one Chanukah, playing checkers and chess, and watching television from the children’s shows to early news broadcasts to inspiring sports events such as the Olympics especially the winter events with the skiers sliding down the slopes planting a seed in my brother’s heart that he enjoys to this day.

The basement was a scary wonderland – discovered by way of the creaky steep (at least to a child) stairs, with the musty laundry room, the extra bedroom that would be illegal today and was questionable back then, the shelves filled with old magazines that my mother was unwilling or unable to give away, the storage room where the home-made dill pickles and canned goods were stored, and the main room where we played and, at one point, watch the tadpoles that we caught a Elmwood park, mature into toads – sometime jumping out of their containers only to be squished or become dry on the floor.

The backyard was the place of hours and hours of three- season fun with its swing set bringing fun sky rides and monkey barring until the wasp nest and rust finally ended its play life. It was in the back yard where I hit my brother in the head with a rock and where we watched in amazement and then fear as one of our many dogs chased its tale to exhaustion before it was diagnosed with distemper. And the backyard provided the home field for the neighborhood wiffle ball games on the upper level that was relatively flat and open, bordered only by the family garden that grew each summer and spring with treats from carrots hidden in the ground to the corn stalks reaching toward the sky.

All of this had been left behind when I went with my grandmother, my Bobi, on a trip to Denver to visit the cousins (a trip when my only memory is of sharing a bed with my Bobi in which I slept with my head at the foot end of the bed and her feet being much to close to my face), and when I returned, we had moved. To this day, I don’t know how it happened so quickly and without my being there, but it did. When I returned, it was to a new house that soon became my new home. But I never had the opportunity to give a final farewell to Howard Street. Over the years, I would bike by the house and then drive by. When I moved out of town, my return visits always included a stop on Howard Street and perhaps a picture, but never did I venture to walk up onto the porch and ring the doorbell, until that moment this summer, after my mother’s funeral, when I parked, approached the front door much like Jacob must have approached Esau (but without the family being sent up first), up those stairs that once seemed so big, to the porch where many a picture of my early childhood was taken, and finally, a deep breath and my hand moved to the button which I touch with a firm finger and rang the doorbell.

But no one was home, no one was home.