Today's National Poetry Writing Month prompt asks for poems about a place remembered from early childhood. I remembered a house that wasn't really fit for "living" in, I suppose, but we "camped" there for several happy months of my childhood...
Hearing that the young carpenter preferred
Drinking to work, her parents gave the word:
"If you can build your own house and then live
In it, our blessing on you we will give."
They gave him the steep corner of the hill.
He brought in scraps of wood from other sites.
The kitchen perched on stilts; no wood to fill
In walls below. The house was wired for lights,
Not sockets, but no bills were ever paid,
In any case. The dare bet never mentioned water,
So the house had none. The three main rooms were laid
On solid ground, safe for the neighbors' daughter.
No paint nor insulation ever was
Brought in. He only camped there the one year.
The house looked poor, but served the builder's cause.
The chimney was a triumph; kept air clear.
So then he built his bride a better house
And they had fourteen children. Seven died.
He was, just as her parents feared, a souse;
The children brought a mix of shame and pride.
But they grew old together. I was born
The year before their first great-grandchild came.
The house built on a bet had stood forlorn
And empty fifty years, but still brought fame
To the one man who'd built it all alone.
We rented it because the price was right.
The sun shone through walls where the boards had shrunk.
"Too shiftless to fill in, that stupid drunk..."
The doorstep matched my five-year-old knees' height.
"I can't believe this house once passed inspection,"
A visitor said. "You'd bring a child in here?"
I had my own room, for play and reflection.
I loved the house, the next four and that year.
"It will be cold in winter! It's horrid now!
Oh, just imagine it then, how much horrider."
My mother didn't scold the meddling cow
But quietly packed us up and went to Florida.
I went to school from that house. Used to read
While comfortably seated in the door.
People don't think kids sit enough to need
A seat that fits. I'd not found one before.
"When Grandmother comes here, we'll move again,"
The parents said. I didn't want to leave.
We moved to a much nicer house, that's plain.
I liked the house built on a bet. Believe.
Another family moved in, and put in lights
And wiring, too, and panelling on the walls.
The house still felt the chill on winter nights.
(They brought a telephone, too, and took calls.)
We used the house built on a bet again
After Grandmother died. My two bookshelves
Now held a record player; windowpane
Was backed by storm panes. We, ourselves,
Still cooked with wood, hauled water from the spring.
If I'd hauled more of the water, might have seen
How anyone could find a single thing
Wrong with the house built before the Machine
Age reached our lovely time-warp neighborhood.
I was a child. To me it was all good.
Years later, I joined another poetry challenge lamenting for children who had died in refugee camps outside the US border. I wrote verses to the tune of a Spanish lullaby that affirms that "at the gate of Heaven, they sell shoes for the angels" who had been innocent children, too little to wear shoes. I imagined the children rejoicing in parts of Heaven that look like South America, with their grandparents; but the adults who had encouraged the families to try to immigrate illegally "are not found; they never will be found; their souls were never bound for Heaven at all." Some readers' comments were like "Yes!" Others thought I needed to see a photo of the house one of those children had left...I am sorry. I realize that the children were leaving a dirty slum rather than a lovely, spacious, gracious community of hill farms. But I looked at a picture of a bare light bulb stuck into the weathered black planks in a narrow room like the vestibule in the house I had loved, as a child, and what came to mind was "If that old house were still standing, a child who got to live in it would be lucky. Even if that little vestibule where they put the telephone were what the child had for a bedroom, it would be a cool bedroom for a child!"
The oldfashioned "house carpenter" built several houses that are still standing today. That first one was "modernized," with an enclosed ground floor, hot and cold running water, and flush toilets, in 1976; it burned down in 1994. The builder died in 1977, his widow ten years later. The place where the house stood is covered in trees again, too steep to plough or build on with modern equipment.
The house where my grandmother spent her last years, with us, is the older part of the house where I live now. It, too, was built by the "house carpenter," and had an entertaining history of its own. It was prized because in addition to electricity and running water, it was built all one level and easily made wheelchair-accessible; several people took turns renting it, as needed, and we naturally moved out again by the end of the month after Grandmother's funeral. A few years later we inherited the title and made it a permanent residence. I liked this house, too. I still do.
Something still appeals to me about the idea of that long-gone, funny-looking house. I think, during the years when nobody actually lived in it, it may have been photographed for one of those collections clueless visitors snapped out of car windows and published as Poverty in the Appalachian Mountains. Its kitchen stood on fifteen-foot poles; the steep downgrade below allowed the kitchen window to look straight out into the top of a flowering pear tree. Oh the poverty and the struggling sense of beauty...some people might have seen. What I always saw was the spirit of a laborer who built a large house, with hand tools and few if any extra hands, just to prove he could do it. And the house stood for more than seventy years.
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