HOUSES II

We left off with my 4th move in 7 years.

This is the house on Markdale from the previous post.

The next house was the most interesting so far, partly because I actually remember it so well, but also because of the house itself.

My dad was the resident director of a children's home in St. Louis so we moved to a big house on the children's home campus.  This was a BIG house.  I think it was 100 years old when we moved in and that was ...1968!  (OMG)  My dad could probably tell me the history of that house, but I just knew it was old and had been part of the children's home from the start.  It had five bedrooms, two full baths, and at least one half bath. I don't remember if there was another one downstairs.  It had the most terrifying basement in the universe, and not just because we used to make haunted housed down there. I t had one room with a huge meat hook hanging in the middle! ( The stuff of horror movies!)

The house  was so old and had such high ceilings that the stairway had to make a 180 degree turn half way up.  It had a big enough landing that one of my sister's friend  made at least one super 8 movie using it as a throne room.

We went from the tiny bedroom house to one that had enough bedrooms for everyone.  However, my brother still had the smallest room in the whole house!  This was like some sort of bad curse on him or something.  My room was next to the small half bath upstairs.  There was an entrance into my dad's office on the other side of the bathroom.  This was the second scariest place in the house!  This room had a closet with a closet in it!  Swear to God! And this house was clearly not built with the modern day closet accommodations with walk in closets so big you have to call a cab to get to the other side. I am surprised there was no meat hook in that closet!  My brother had to walk through that room to get to the bath room, but he would rather walk all the way around the other way and go through my room if he need to go.  It was that scary.

I am not saying that this house was haunted, but it was.  There are at least two incidents that make me say that.  The first was, that the faucet in that bathroom used to turn on full blast by itself. I would be in my room, minding my own business, when I would here this loud whoosh.  I would go in the bathroom to find the water on. That faucet was not loose and I am not talking a slow leaky drip.  Full Blast!  Do old faucets do that?

On at least one occasion I watched a bag of groceries fall off a chair in slow motion.  It went from sitting in the middle of the chair to tipping over to falling on the floor.  Maybe this was just a top heavy bag responding to physics, but I don't think so! 

The last truly freaky thing did not actually happen in the house, so I am wondering about poltergeist possibilities!  I was walking our dog on the way to pick up my brother at the campus day care center. I was passing one of the cottages ( one of the houses for girls in this case)  Something made me look up at the window.  I saw it sort of bend and ripple and it suddenly burst into pieces!  One of the girls came to the window and yelled, "Hey girl!  Did you throw something at that window?"  I was pretty freaked out myself! "I was just walking my dog!" I yelled back and burst into tears. The house mother ran up to the window and saw it was me and realized that maybe she shouldn't accuse her bosses daughter of wrong-doing.  Plus there was no object that could account for the breakage and the window was at lease two feet over my head so there was no way I could have reached it, not to mention that  my ability to throw hard enough to break a window was nil. 

So the house was big and old and scary, but it was also a  cool place to live. It had a huge back yard.  There was a pool on the campus, so we got to swim every day in the summer.  There were three trampolines on the campus and we all got pretty good at doing tricks.  This was before all the safety rules and liability insurance stuff.  The whole time we lived there, no one broke the rules of one person at a time and five minutes per turn and I don't remember anyone getting hurt either.

That's enough for today, but I have a lot more to say about that house, so I will tell you more next time.

I am going to a training tomorrow to become a volunteer at Rainbow  Hospice, so I will probably not get a chance to write before Sunday, but I am on a roll and will be back soon.  Until then, here is a pic from a surprise going away party my friend Kellie (left side blue shirt) gave me when we moved.  You can tell it was a surprise party because I was dressed so dorky! Although, it probably wouldn't have mattered.  I think I always dressed dorky then. Oh yeah, I am the one with glasses.  That's my brother in the front row.  His growth was obviously stunted from being forced to sleep in tiny bedrooms. And that is my sister's arm.  She was probably trying to get out of the picture.  Epic fail...