Saying Goodbye to Bintliff Drive: The Final Viewing (Pt. 4)

 Trying to smile for one last picture

My neighborhood and I are  peers—we’re both in our fifties, so it’s hard to hide the wear and tear; we’ve also become even more multicultural. The elementary school at the end of the street now holds more English Language Learners than native speakers, including many of the  Somali Bantu refugee group I advocate for.  The Jr. High at the other end of our street was still a "neighborhood" school in 1967, (meaning the student body was close to 100% Caucasian). It wasn't until 9th grade that zoning artificially "integrated" our schools and we were assigned to Sharpstown Jr. High (beyond another Jr. High school). By high school, most of us were reunited and no one cared what color the other kids were. Today, a few of the original neighbors still live on the two streets in our subdivision, and many of my childhood pals still get together and reminisce about our happiest days there.

The Last Visit

Last Sunday--May Day (Lei Day in Hawaii ) my younger sister and I loaded up the last of the things we are taking to our own homes.  I have been hassling with the shipment of the antique door which was originally on my great grandparents' house in Marlin, Texas. Next it became the kitchen door on my parents' house--and when it finally finds its way to Tennessee, I'll make it my back door.  It just feels right that we would take such an important symbol of our comings and goings into the another generation of our family life.  So now I will say my final farewells . . .

Goodbye Family Room

Our kitchen, breakfast area and den was one big room, so everything that happened to one of us was in community. Our one television was parked there, so we had to learn to agree on what to watch before the 10 o'clock news ended our day. The kitchen table was the site of meals, homework and projects. The red rotary wall phone had a long cord, but not long enough for very private conversations. (One time my sister thought Daddy had hung up the second phone until her boyfriend asked, "What's new pussycat?" and my dad answered, "Who wants to know?"

Goodbye Kitchen

The kitchen looks about the same as it always did, but it has a new oven and refrigerator now. I still miss the vintage brown oven that bit the dust in 2009 after 48 years (read about it here). I've already placed my grandmother's needlepoint in my youse--Google couldn't uncover the source of  "Time removes all things but love and truth," but I believe Honey's Needlepoint Philosophy now more than ever. 

Honey's needlepoint philosophy (author unknown)

Suppertime was always 6:30 p.m. after my dad got home at 6:00.  Like "Leave it to Beaver",  we all sat at the table to eat--without the television on. She taught school all day, but after lying down on the couch for about 30 minutes, she would get up and cook us a real dinner.  As we got older, we each chose a school night to help prepare a meal. I guess those girl scout badges and 8th grade home economics classes paid off a little. I so wish I had a picture of the dish washing chart taped inside the kitchen cabinet that we constantly fought over. Spoiled!

Their 1958 original oven was only replaced a year or so ago

Goodbye "Back" Bedroom

Our 3-2-2 1950's ranch style house meant all the bedrooms were situated in a row on one short hall. My parents shared the "front" room, my little sister had the "middle" room and my older sister and I shared the "back room" until she went away to college a year ahead of me. Before central air conditioning, we had a big brown air conditioning unit above our twin beds. To help the airflow get down the hall, we had to keep our door open--so we could never get away with late night shenanigans. Our dad's "radar ears" heard every whisper and he would come smacking his newspaper against his hand . . . as if he would ever have spanked either one of us (our parents were Dr. Spock disciples). We had one long window that looked out over the magnolia tree and swing set--in Houston, you rarely opened the windows--except for our fire safety practices when my dad demonstrated how to use our doll high chair to bust the glass and climb out. He'd also scratch on our screen with the hose to try to scare us out of sneaking out in later years. 

                                      

When we finally got central air conditioning, we got new "Frenchy" antiqued bunk beds but the room was still pretty crowded for two teen-aged girls with very different personalities and cleaning habits . . . my only privacy was in the closet, where I would close myself  in and write little tomes like "What I will not do when I am a parent." Once we went away to college, we were shocked to learn that our parents did not intend to enshrine our room--as soon as we moved out our grandmother moved in our room for seven years and so it became "Honey's room" sans our floor to ceiling cork boards full of tickets, spirit ribbons and dead corsages. 

Goodbye Blue Bathroom

Still baby blue after all these years

Another characteristic of 50's houses was small bathrooms, though the one we three sisters shared was still bigger than the (yeah, whatever) master bath that barely held a single sink, toilet and shower. My mom's favorite color is BLUE, so everything she could talk my dad into painting or "antiquing" was that color--the carpet, the china cabinet, our dresser, even our bathroom walls and cabinets. We had a lot of fun and squabbles in that bathroom, from playing "Hawaii" (making waves) in the tub, doctoring scrapes with Camphophenique (click here for Dad's remedy for almost any problem), experimenting with orange juice can curlers, to hiding "evidence" inside the big plastic bonnets that attached to our 60's style hair dryer.

Goodbye Living Room

My favorite room in the house, and the hardest to say goodbye to, was the living room, the only somewhat private part of our home. The hall door and sliding doors to the family room could be closed off. It contained a drop leaf mahogany table, whose sides were raised to host holiday dinners with our relatives. This was also the Christmas tree room--usually very fat snow flocked Scotch Pines which were perfectly lighted and beautifully decorated despite the annual strain on my parents' relationship. The stereo and couch  provided a pretty cozy date place, except you had to compete with another sister and be out of there by 10:30 p.m. 

Goodbye  Beloved Piano

The reason I most loved our living room was the beautiful Baldwin Acrosonic piano we bought in 1965.  Once I started piano lessons in 3rd grade, I played virtually every day--singing show tunes, practicing classical pieces, picking out pop songs by ear, and composing music for my "beatnik" poetry as a melancholy teen. My dad wasn't a big conversationalist but some of my best memories with him are when he would  sit down and sing harmony with me or play a little duet on piano or guitar.

I wonder how many dreams and feelings were absorbed by those ivory keys played by tens of pint sized and wrinkled fingers? Gran's favorite song was "Melody in F."  Honey's was "Mighty Like a Rose." Mother's is "Joyful, Joyful We Adore Thee" and Daddy's are "Rock of Ages: and "Little Brown Jug".  My sisters, cousins and neighbors banged out hours of funny duets, popular songs with mocked up lyrics and carols for holiday sing a longs. Those were the songs I plunked out for the last "recital." on Bintliff Drive. 

Our daughter always hoped to inherit this piano but since they don't own a home and are headed overseas soon, I will save her the piano I inherited from my grandmother. Surprisingly, Dad is giving their piano to his Hungarian neighbor who has helped maintain their house ever since he found asylum in the U.S. I think that made both of them very happy, and I hope the hands that play it in the future will be blessed by the music contained in its strings.

Goodbye Address

All essential mail has already been forwarded to the new apartment, so the house quietly awaits its new owners . . After my nephew snapped one last picture, we drove away, pledging not to shed any more tears. I supposed we are starting to realize that we are so blessed to still have each other, to be leaving (somewhat) on our own terms--now we merely lack a central meeting place.  Though Bintliff Drive has been the "epicenter" of our family life for half a century, our only true anchor is in another country. One by one, over the next few years or decades, our family will eventually reunite to sing new songs and to create new memories that will never fade. So farewell.