This Old House on Buchanan Street

I was sitting at the computer with the small desk television on when Robert Wagner appeared and started peddling reverse mortgages. For some reason this caused me to think about an old house on Buchanan Street. That old house was my aunt's home located at 2011 Buchanan Street in Pasadena, Texas. It set me to wondering about who if anyone lived there now and what was the condition of the house. I wondered, are they building memories there as we did?

You see our extended family all lived close to each other all of my parent's life. From the farm in north east Texas . . . to the sojourn in in Orange (my birthplace) . . . to finally settling in Pasadena, Texas when I was about 9 or 10 years the Appleby's lived close together, went to church together, played together celebrated together and grieved together. There was a mystic and real bond that kept us centered as a family.

At any rate, Robert Wagner started me on a nostalgic and somewhat emotional journey. You see, that old house was the location of many of events that have become my childhood and adult memories. I remembered that it was there that Raymond (my uncle) showed me how to paint those cute little circles in the ceiling when I was about ten years old. I still see all his fishing rods and equipment on the left hand side of the garage.

Memories, boy do I have some. I still see my father, his brothers and sisters all squeezed on a small couch for a family photo; I can still see everyone gathered around the old out of tune upright piano as my mother played and everyone sang. Seemed every gathering required some family singing; then there was the all night camp out by cousins sleeping under tents in the house made up of sheets and blankets tied to chairs with a fan keeping them semi-inflated; the reading of the Christmas story. Yep if it involved the extended Appleby family then it happened in that house on Buchanan Street.

As I have thought about it that old house in a real way represented our extended Appleby family. It seem to me that as long as that house was there there was a sense or permanency about what we had as a family. That old house became significant not because of its size, its beauty or its condition but because over time it became the Appleby family gathering place. It was in that house that great extended family events transpired. From wedding and holiday celebrations to post funeral meals . . . that house new them all. Every new born in the family would pass through that house and it was the house where the matriarch of our family, my grandmother died. Come to think of it there was a crowd there that night as well.

That phrase "reverse mortgage" shook me back to the present reality. That bond that my grandparents started and their children perpetuated has been largely lost by my generation. The real world effects of that reverse mortgage had on my aunt's ownership of the house became a symbol of what has happened to that old Appleby family bond. The steady and consistent eating away of the value of the home until she no longer owned it proved to be a metaphor for the slow but apparently inevitable dissolving of that greater Appleby Family Bond. Slowly but most certainly as the generation that included my father and his siblings began to slip the surly bonds of earth that family bond began to loosen. Over time those of my generation began to drift apart and become scattered all across the country. Perhaps it was inevitable that we should thus drift. The Matriarch was no longer there to command our presence and our own careers and families took us away from the city where that old house was located.

O, to be sure when we do get together now, largely reduced to funerals, we still enjoy a brief rebirth of that family bond. I don't suppose that what was born in our youth will ever completely fade away but it sure isn't what it used to be. In fact, my children do not know my cousin's children the way I knew my cousins. They share a common heritage but in many instances don't even know each other's names and to me that's sad. Sometimes I feel sorry for them that we didn't give them what our families gave us. Blame it on the times or whatever but they have missed something very special and I suspect they don't even know it.

Perhaps the answer lies in regenerative nature of life. One generation first gives birth and then gives way to the next. Perhaps it was and is the responsibility of each generation to give birth to a new expression of that old family bond. If we do maybe just maybe somewhere down the line there will be an old house in our children and grand children's lives that they will look back upon with wonderful memories. But for now I'll just sit here and enjoy what the hymn writer described when he penned the words:

Precious memories how they linger

How they ever flood my soul;

In the stillness of the midnight

precious sacred scenes unfold.

If you don't have any then heed the advice of Trace Adkins in his song "Just Fishin" and start making some memories.