Come Onna My House ~ c. 1950

This is the house we lived in from the time I was 8 1/2 until I was almost 13. See that old Victorian lamp in the window? I still have it. Maybe I'll take a photo of it tomorrow and show you what it looks like up close.

Many was the time I rode my bike into that garage and sprinted up the stone steps, taking two at a time. Once I was headed up those steps at my usual warp speed, and on a step I skipped (thankfully) was a bevy of tiny baby copperheads. There had to be at least 8-9 of them. Knowing that wherever the babies are, the mother is not far behind, I completed the rest of the trip up to the house at even faster speed than before. About a week later, my mom and I were coming in from the grocery store, and I was walking up the steps with 2 full brown paper bags of food hiding my view.

All of a sudden, mom hollered, "Judy, STOP! Don't move! Set your bags down! Then I saw on the sidewalk at the top of the steps, a full-grown, 3 foot long copperhead. She was lying in the groove of the walkway, enjoying a sun bath. Lucky for me, she was either too lazy from the heat of the sun to move, or maybe she just hadn't seen me yet. I ran back down the steps, and mom asked me to go around the side yard to our tool house, and get a hoe. I got it, and mom chopped off the head of the snake. Have you ever seen the severed head of a copperhead? The mouth opens and closes repeatedly. I was told that will go on until sundown on that day. I didn't stick around to prove that, and mom gathered up the head and the body and disposed of them in a trash can.

We had only a tiny front porch, but that was the scene for many a "show", put on by a group of my girlfriends. Mom had a trunk full of old clothes, hats, shoes, even curtains in the basement, and we made good use of them, playing dress-up to our heart's content in the lazy summer days. We would pretend to be Broadway chorus girls or movie stars. Carmen Miranda was a fun person for us to mimic back then.

I remember getting a new puppy, after my favorite dog, a black cocker spaniel named Pud, was killed by a car. The new puppy was so tiny and sweet and she helped me to forget the grief I had for Pud. One morning when she was about 9 weeks old, I opened the basement door and called for her, and she didn't appear at the foot of the stairs. When I went to investigate, I found her lying on her side, foaming at the mouth. The vet said she had been poisoned, and we never found out how - or who did it.

The year before we moved from that house, my strongest memory is of the 12" snowfall we had one night; school was cancelled and we spent the day making snow angels. Snow icecream was eaten by the bowlful, as quickly as mom could make it.

Addendum: There are two older posts written about the times I spent in this home. You can find them in the archives for 6-15-05 and 6-9-05.