I had some time to myself yesterday morning before the training started, so I drove over to my old neighborhood to look around. Pulling up in front of 14 Cannonnade Boulevard, a house we rented for about a year, I took a deep breath and rang the doorbell. What the heck, I thought. The owners either show me around or they don’t. Nothing to lose, right?
A woman appeared around the edge of the house, holding a shotgun! Ha ha! Not really. She was an older woman but seemed friendly enough. I walked over and introduced myself.
“You don’t know me, ” I said, “but I used to live in this house about thirty years ago.”
She immediately brightened up and introduced herself as Vincentine Williams. She and her husband John moved into the house about two years after we left and have lived there ever since. They bought the house for “a song” because apparently there was a lien on it and they happened to know who held the lien. They were the first owners after a long string of renters, which included us.
Vincentine is a piano teacher and was used to having people in her house. She happily showed me around the jungle of a backyard, pointing out the places where massive oak trees were felled by hurricanes past. I gleefully snapped pictures as she narrated all the troubles she’s had keeping the yard in shape.
The house itself always held magic in my mind. The back yard truly is a jungle! Banana trees sprout everywhere. Bamboo bushes now tower over everything. Massive oak trees dot the yard (though not as many as before). It was the first house we lived in with a basement, which provided a wet bar, a sump pump, an outdoor staircase and other basement-y attractions. Standing in the yard brought me back to the age of eight again, racing around the patio on bikes and Big Wheels with my brothers on many sweaty Alabama nights.
Vincentine’s husband was just waking, which made me feel bad about showing up, but Vincintine was still happy to show me the basement of the house (where the wet bar used to be). It was now festively decorated with black and white tiles, on which two beautiful grand pianos were displayed.
Vincentine also showed me the kitchen area, which had changed very little outside of a nice reflected-light ceiling that had recently been added. I wondered if the old ceiling bore any evidence of the grease fire we had one morning when we lived there.
The house was built in 1958 and was so novel at the time that Vincentine claims it once graced the cover of Better Homes And Gardens magazine. It had an in-house vacuum cleaner and an intercom system, nice touches even today but nothing less than groundbreaking back then. By the time we lived there the intercom was a squealy mess, though the vacuum system was still good for childish entertainment.
When we lived there the house had a flat roof which led to some funny incidents. One night my parents heard footsteps on their roof above their heads and called the sheriff. My dad had to lead the way for the deputy who responded, who was scared to death in spite of being fully armed. Eventually they got to the roof and surprised the suspect, a critter. Maybe a raccoon. Everyone had a good laugh and went to bed.
I thought Vincentine might want to hear stories of when we lived there but all she seemed to do was tell me the great things about the house. She was almost trying to sell me the house, in a way! I do believe she would have invited me in for the whole day had I not had to go to work. She kept telling me how much it meant to her husband when they went back a few years to see his old Midwestern childhood home, which she called the place “Gruesome Grove,” though I can’t find it anywhere.
I was fortunate to meet Vincentine and to get such a wonderful tour of my old home. We didn’t live there long but it sure was fun to be there as a kid. It makes me happy to know its been in good hands ever since.