My first home. Located in my Hometown of Fultondale, Alabama.
I lived there from the ages of Zero to Fourteen.
1432 Leora Avenue. It rhymes
Not a big place at all. I’m guessing 800 square feet: Three bedrooms, one bath.
The ceilings were seven-foot tall.
We didn’t have much at this time in life, but we were rich.
We had an old three hundred pound TV that sat in the living room.
On top of the three hundred pound TV was the twelve-inch TV that we watched because the other one was broken and too heavy to take to the dump.
And, on top of that TV was a big metal soup pot used to catch the water when it rained. The roof leaked.
We had something that many people did not have — a VCR.
Dad was a pro at setting up that VCR and programming it to record all his favorite shows.
Our Dad worked for TVA and got called out to work a lot.
It seemed like he was always on call or “Stand-by.”
He also had a side-line business doing electrical work.
Plus, one night a week, Dad took Dale Carnegie classes to better himself. So, he missed a lot of his shows.
Every day, Dad would put a blank VHS tape into the VCR and set it to record “Cheers” or one of his other favorite shows. We knew not to bother the VCR. He would label each tape “Cheers 01, Cheers 02,” etc.
We had a small stream running through our yard.
Dad built a small bridge going over the stream to get to the other side of our yard.
Across the bridge that Dad had built was a clubhouse.
Yes, Dad was a jack of all trades, and he went all out when he built our clubhouse.
Since he was an electrician, our clubhouse had electricity.
We also had bunk beds and a front porch.
We later put a TV in there, and Dad ran a cable TV line to the clubhouse.
The clubhouse was always “Base” when we played chase.
It was the fort when playing capture the flag or BB gun war. Yes, we played BB gun war, bottle rocket war, and many other games. But, I am pretty sure our parents did not know about that.
I wish I had a picture of the old clubhouse, but I can’t find any.
Cameras were not as available then as they are now.
Also across the stream was a Tire Swing that Dad put up for us.
Dad always made sure that we had lots of things to do.
We had the Black Creek right next to us.
We used to catch Bream, Bass, and Catfish out of Black creek and put them in the little stream that ran through our yard. We would dam the stream up so the fish would have a lot of room to swim. We also caught Crawdad and Turtles in that stream.
There was a tunnel that ran underneath the road next to our house.
We would hide in that tunnel when playing hide-n-seek or any of the other games that we would play.
Friends came over all the time to play.
If I ever spent the night at someone else’s house, I would have a problem sleeping—silence.
That was because no trains were going by while I slept at their home.
See, we had a train track in our backyard.
Every two hours, and, sometimes sooner, a train would go through our backyard. I couldn’t sleep unless I heard the blowing of the train’s horn before bed.
We would walk the tracks to our favorite fishing hole on the Black Creek—the “Deep Hole.” It was the deepest part of the creek.
We would catch seventy or eighty Bream each day at the Deep Hole.
In all actuality, we were catching the same fish over and over.
Getting back home from playing, mom would have supper cooked—one meat and several vegetables from our garden.
Dad had a huge garden. Huge to us.
Every season, Tot Tot, my Granddad, would bring his horse over to our house and plow the garden.
Dad and the rest of us would then plant seeds.
Dad tended to the garden while all the vegetables were growing.
We would all go out and pick the vegetables as a family.
We also had Grapevines, Apple, and Peach trees.
There was also a wood-burning stove in the living room with a small pipe that ran through the ceiling.
I always asked Mom and Dad to please not build a fire on Christmas Eve because it would be hard enough for Santa to come down that little pipe. It wouldn’t be right to have a fire going on top of that.
The old home wasn’t much, but we always had food to eat and friends over to play. Mom and Dad made the house a home.
We had everything in our eyes.
I’ve attached a photo that I grabbed off the internet of the place.
It’s a little different nowadays. We didn’t have a metal roof. In the back of the house, you can see how close the Train Tracks were to us.
Every time I see a kid outside playing in his yard, it reminds me of the good times I had at my first home.
On the outside, it may not look like that kid has much.
I know that in his world, though, he is a king, and the world is his oyster.
