Mike Moore: Bidding my childhood residence goodbye

By now, a couple of strangers have commandeered my bedroom. Except it isn’t mine anymore.

Tuesday, January 1, 2008 9:54 PM CST

It’s theirs, along with everything else at my childhood home. When the new owners are settled in, it might be an office or TV room instead.

As Mom and I said our farewells to the place over the weekend, my territorial instinct kicked in. Probably that’s a rite of passage for adults who lose ties to their residential roots.

I wasn’t attached enough to buy the house myself and preserve it like a Moore museum. The friendly young couple moving west from Waterford has the keys and the deed, so renovate away.

If only I could communicate what never makes it into a real estate listing. Having spent half my life there, I’ve got images more vivid than what those new owners will see.

They’ll see a scraped-up bedroom door. I want to tell them it withstood some of the most ESPN-worthy dunks ever performed on a Nerf hoop.

They’ll see a ton of massive, sometimes overgrown trees. I want to point out it was the best-kept secret among Christmas tree farms. As the only customer, I had 24-hour access to the lot and scouted the prospects throughout the year.

They’ll see a bowed workbench in the basement. I want to tell them it’s the industrial hub where, as a Cub Scout, I proudly sawed and sanded the least aerodynamic vehicle in Pinewood Derby history.

They’ll see a long, curvy driveway and stress over the plowing arrangements. I want to tell them about the original arrangement: I provided the cheap labor while my dog, with a Donald Driver-like ability to catch shoveled snow in his mouth, provided the cheap entertainment.

They’ll hold their noses in a moldy basement. I want to clue them in that it once was a three-star summer escape for a family who couldn’t afford air conditioning. The inverted penthouse came furnished with cot and 13-inch TV.

With a grumble, they’ll tolerate a crotchety second freezer that frosts up food like the Ice Age in which it was built. I want to shout that it was once a bottomless source of deer sausage from my dad’s hunting party.

They’ll see an eyesore of a dinosaur television antenna. I need to note that big bruiser hauled in Chicago stations, too, pushing our package of available channels into the double digits.

Once the snow melts, they’ll spot a bare, rectangular patch in the lawn. I won’t be there to clarify that served as the open-air garage for my cars, keeping the leather seats cool in the sexy two-tone brown 1983 Grand Prix.

Before the ghost of Norman Rockwell feels obliged to paint our household, a few words of balance from the other side of this coin.

The new owners will see a relatively up-to-date dryer. I want to tell them the story of how the old one, with its door secured by a pocket-sized magnet, came a few volts short of turning me into an order of fried teenager.

They’ll see the solitude of the somewhat secluded land. Makes me curious if the smiles will be as wide in a few weeks when they’re driving seven miles for a gallon of milk.

I want to pass all of those things on to the new residents of my old home, but I won’t. In that small, plain ranch house flanked by nature, they’re busy seeing unlimited possibilities. And I want to tell them there are only memories.

Mike Moore’s local column runs Monday, Wednesday and Friday. He can be reached at (262) 631-1724 or mike.moore@lee.net

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