When I was a little girl I was fascinated by a storybook that featured a cute little house that was built in a lovely field. The house was loved and cared for by its owner but over time it began to show the wear and tear of age as the city moved closer and closer. Eventually the house stood cramped between two tall buildings, looking shabby and unhappy but help was on the way. The granddaughter of the original owner came along and saved the house from its demise. She moved the house to a lovely field in the country and repaired it so that it looked like new once again. The house enjoyed a happy ending because it was now loved.
Our homes are truly our castles but over time they sometimes lose their luster even as we grow old ourselves. We think about the abodes that sheltered us as children, young adults and the ones where we now live. We feel a grateful attachment to those houses that can only be explained by the joy, happiness and life that echoes inside of them.
The first house that I remember was on Kingsbury Street in Houston, Texas where I moved with my parents when my father graduated from college and landed a job as an engineer. It was a lovely ranch stye design with a big picture window in the front that provided a wonderful view of the entire neighborhood. It was large and airy compared to the tinier homes of many of my relatives. Everything inside was brand new and shiny like the wooden floors that led from one room to another.
The kitchen was so big that it held a dining table in the middle and there was still room to dance around on the bright linoleum that my mother kept gleaming. A window over had a perfect view of the large backyard where I was able to run and play as a little girl not yet five years old. The back door to the kitchen opened to a screened in porch where I was that allowed to have fun even when it was raining.
There was a lovely living room connected to a dining area where my parents placed a mahogany table with upholstered chairs. In the living room was an elegant couch made symmetrical by end tables holding brass lamps. Hanging on the area behind the couch was was a painting of flowers that seemed to be from an exotic place. I spent many an hour lying on the sofa imagining stories about the shadows and details in that work of art. In front of the couch was a coffee table holding a marble vase that my father kept filled with roses for my mom.
Down the hallway were three bedrooms and one of them was all mine. I had a double bed in which I would feel the luxury of my life. Each day my mother tidied it with a pink bedspread on which I would lie staring at the pictures of ballerinas that hung on the wall. I felt like a princess in that house. It seemed like a real castle to me. and much like in the fairytales I was very happy there.
This was a time in the early nineteen fifties when the economy of the United States was roaring. My father used his GI benefits to purchase the house. He bought a car to park in our driveway as well. Life was quite good for the growing middle class. My father had no leftover bills for his college education. We lived what seemed to be an idyllic life but hidden on the outskirts of our good fortune there was poverty and racism very much alive, things that little girl me did not realize existed. All that I knew was how happy I felt from day to day being loved by my parents and enjoying life with the innocence of a pre-schooler.
I look back on that time over seventy years later and realize how much has changed since then. The house that I viewed as a kind of mansion would be considered very small and unspectacular by modern day standards. I doubt that is was more than a thousand square feet in area but it felt more than adequate back then,
While it felt wonderful and I saw that house as having just enough for me and my family, most people today would think of it as being crowded and perhaps a bit inadequate . The broken up rooms lined along a hallway are not longer in fashion. Styles and expectations have changed so much since that time. I myself have moved to bigger and bigger places and still seem to run out room for all of my possessions. I sometimes find myself wondering how I and others became so spoiled, especially as I see perfectly good homes like the one of my early childhood being neglected as though they are unworthy of modern day habitation. I think of the little house in that book and I wonder if the time has come for our society to paint and repair what we already have, making small houses clean and affordable for the many people who yearn for places of their own.
I don’t know what kind of salary my father had back then nor do I have any idea how much that house cost. I have seen that homes of that era ran from about $7500 to $10,000 with monthly payments of fifty to eighty dollars a month. Of course the salaries were less back then as well. but somehow it was affordable for most young families to have a home of their own. We Boomers grew up in places that seemed heavenly at the time that might be spurned today. Somehow we seem to want rather than need more and more and more without noticing that there are people who have never experienced the joy of owning a home.
My parents bought that house in their early twenties. In today’s economy most young adults are in their mid thirties before they can afford a home. The cost of housing has gone through the roof leaving more an more young men and women renting instead of being able to invest in a house of their own.
Surely instead of starting wars and spending millions on vanity projects and billions on chasing immigrants away we as a nation should be considering how to help all Americans find a house with a reasonable price so that they might enjoy the pleasure that my parents and I found in that house on Kingsbury Street. Somehow we have taken the wrong turn in our economy and in the things that we prioritize but it’s never too late circle back and rescue little houses that will bring security and happiness to more people, especially those just beginning their adult lives.
Is that just a fairytale or can we make it possible?
All It Takes Is A Little Love 