This old house

Colmesneil -- In the spring of 1955, a man named Woodrow Davis married a woman named Mildred Landrum, though no one called her Mildred. They called her Red.

The name hasn’t been self-explanatory in many years. Red's hair is nearly the color of milk glass. The freckles that once marched across her smooth, white skin have faded. But in my mind’s eye I easily see a head full of wavy, rebelliously red hair.

The day Red married Woodrow, she became the mother of three children: 14-year-old Jerrie, 12-year-old Jimmy and seven-year-old Brenda. Woodrow’s first wife had died five years earlier, when Brenda, my mother, was 13 months old.

Before the wedding, people asked Red if she was worried about inheriting three children. She told them she wasn’t.

When Red was around 19 years old, she had surgery. When she woke up from the anesthesia, the doctor sat at the end of her bed and said, “Now, you know, you’ll never have children.”

She loved children. The news was devastating. So when people asked Red if she was worried about becoming a mother to three children, the answer was easy: No. She was glad. Though the transition wasn't always easy.

Red had grown up in a sawmill town, Woodrow a few miles down the road in Mt. Carmel. They dated some in high school. He took her dancing. Then they drifted apart the way teenagers do.

When he was about 18, Woodrow met a girl in Ebenezer community, about nine miles down the road. Her name was Sadie Ruth Ellis. They fell in love, married and had children.

“You never met a better woman,” Red will say of Sadie Ruth. Everyone knew each other in the Deep Pineywoods of East Texas, when Sunday night dances were a dime and even that wasn't easy to come by.

Five years following Sadie Ruth’s sudden death, Red’s sister set her up on a date with Woodrow. He took her dancing. They both loved to dance.

“She was good,” laughs Woodrow. “I could hardly get a dance with her because everyone else wanted to.”

“Your Pappaw was a good dancer too,” she says with a serious nod.

After they were married about two years, Woodrow bought some land in Colmesneil and paid $7,000 to have a little wood-framed house built on it. But before the house could be built, the land had to be cleared.

There is a reason this part of Texas is called The Big Thicket. Red and Woodrow and Jimmy used a cross-cut saw, an ax, a shovel and a hoe to cut back a matted tangle of briars, chop down trees and dig out stumps. They tamed Mother Nature and eventually moved into the little white house on Highway 69.

Oftentimes after school, Jimmy and Brenda would sit at the table with Red and talk about their day. While they talked, Jimmy might drink a half-gallon of milk, courtesy of their dairy cow. The day they switched to store-bought milk, said Red, Jimmy quit drinking milk.

Over the years, Red and Woodrow expanded the house by taking in part of the front porch, adding on rooms, expanding the kitchen. Red’s azaleas climbed a pipe-framed tower in the side yard, and in the spring they still burst into a glory of color. Until recently, every summer Woodrow’s butterbean vines crawled so high up bamboo poles, an eight-foot ladder was required for harvesting. Once, a passing photographer spotted him in the garden, and a few months later Woodrow appeared in Texas Highways, perched atop the ladder, smiling from under the brim of his baseball cap with an outstrechted hand snapping off a butterbean. That picture hung in the kitchen, in a homemade frame, for years.

The picture isn’t there tonight. It’s in a box. The dining room table on which many an amazing meal was served isn’t here either. Nor are the chairs. Or the curio cabinet. The sofa is gone from the living room. The twin beds where my parents sleep during visits have been moved. There are a few chairs left, along with the TV, and a dropleaf table for meals from a depleted refrigerator. The master bed remains so Mammaw and Pappaw can spend a few more nights here while things are set up just a few miles away, in the comfortable little trailerhome behind Uncle Jimmy’s house and, nextdoor, Aunt Jerrie’s house. The double bed where I always sleep remains as well, perhaps because they knew I was coming.

I would have slept on the floor.

It’s not that there aren’t other homes here in Colmesneil where I’m welcome. Being a Davis in these parts means kinship in an enormous clan. But I would happily throw a pillow down in the living room and lay under an orange-yellow-and-brown crocheted afghan to be in this house one more night.

H

When I was very young, we came here on a visit. My memory of this particular visit begins with the house being full of people. Most of the people were relatives, but I didn’t know all their names. Several of them were crying, including my mother. So I backed into the utility room (“the freezer room,” Mammaw calls it) and started to cry myself.

That’s when Aunt Jerrie spotted me, my beautiful Aunt Jerrie. She was loud like my mom, like all the Davises. She laughed loud and talked loud and smiled a lot. But not this time. This time she was soft, and I felt better as soon as she spotted me.

“What’s wrong, baby?” she said, putting her hands under my arms and lifting me onto the freezer.

“Why is everybody crying?” I asked.

“Well, baby …” Her voice cracked. She gathered herself. “They’re just sad because Grandma died, and they loved her very much. But they’ll be OK. They just need to be sad for a little while.”

That moment on the freezer, in this house, I started to learn about life’s transiency. The lesson continues tonight.

Growing up, I spent at least a week every summer in Colmesneil, staying primarily at Mammaw and Pappaw’s house. My cousin Alex and I were inseperable as kids, and when we weren’t at Lake Tejas or at his parents’ house down the road, we were running in and out of Mammaw and Pappaw’s.

Mammaw would let us fill two bowls with Doritos, and we would lay in the living room floor, pulling out a chip at a time and comparing to see whose was covered with the most cheese. Then we’d argue about it. We stood out at the end of the driveway, and when the big rigs roared by, we’d pump our fists up and down so the drivers would blow their horns. When they did, we’d shout and jump for joy. We tromped through the woods in back of the barn where we’d imagine lurking hobos who’d hopped from passing trains. We created elaborate booby traps for the hobos, who somehow always evaded capture.

Most my memories in and around the house are loud ones. The Davises are a vocal bunch. I love how often our extended family gathered in the sitting area off the kitchen and laughed and argued about who had done what with whom, and just how long have they been crazy anyway?

I love that my own children have run through this house and played on the same swinging see-saw Alex and I enjoyed (even though it can pinch the bejeebers outta your leg). This is a wonderful place. And today, I swear, was the first day I consciously noticed the paint peeling on the garage in back. Today is the first day I realized just how many of the surrounding oak trees were felled by Hurricane Rita.

Red and Woodrow – my mammaw and pappaw – have lived here for 50 years, welcoming children, grandchildren, great-grandchildren. He is 89. She will be in August. The fact that they’re still able to do for themselves is a blessing, even if an inordinate amount of grunting is required.

I do not equate losing this house with losing them. Wherever they are, I’ll go there and be glad to be with them.

A house is a house. But it isn’t just a house. This house has a familiar, comfortable smell comprised of old things, years of great cooking and abundant grandparent love.

I thank God I still have the grandparent love. But I know when I leave here tomorrow, I’ll never experience the smell again.

-30-