The Giving House

701 E. Park Avenue, Searcy, Arkansas.

That was the first home of which I have any real memories. We lived there until my 4th grade year, and since then I have lived in many different parts of Searcy. But my first house remained on E. Park Avenue where we had left it, until recently.

 This is the first time that a place in which I have once lived has been destroyed. Now, it was blocking an avenue of expansion for Harding, so I always knew it would be gone someday, and besides I am not too sentimental. But this event does bring back many memories.

I remember when Alex and I got the chicken pox and had to stay in the living room watching TV all day.

I remember the bathroom with an open flame gas heater that felt so good after a bath. I also remember the large, round, smooth stone that served as a doorstop for the selfsame bathroom.

I remember playing Sonic the Hedgehog from the tan sectional couch downstairs.

I remember Alex and me staying up late one cold, wintry night watching some late night comedy show. We slept on the sectional, which was collapsed to form a kind of box. We were kept warm by means of the old franklin stove, which once spat out an ember that burned a hole in my backpack.

I remember memorizing our address by way of a jingle.

I remember getting the Macintosh Performa. I would stay up at night watching the After Dark screen savers.

I remember the pecan trees that we were never really big enough to climb.

I remember growing sunflowers in the little garden.

I remember making plateaus out of play-doh.

I remember Lucy, our dog. She was a very good dog. I remember when she had puppies late one night.

I remember when I stepped up on our old VW Beetle‘s exhaust pipe because I didn’t know that they got hot. I got a blister as big as a half-dollar.

I remember being in the big waterbed and being stung by some bug that had been trapped under the covers.

I remember getting my own room for the first time in my life (since Alex was born). Incidentally, he got his own room at the same time.

I remember Alex getting pneumonia. I also remember him falling off of the bed and busting his nose. That was traumatic because Mom and Dad weren’t home.

I remember the plum tree that never really bore any fruit (literally) during our stay in the house.

Eventually, we moved and rented the house out to people until my grandparents moved in. Once they moved out and the property passed out of our family’s hands, Harding jumped on the opportunity to expand their territories. However, even after the building was destroyed and the ground leveled, the house still served me. I was out this very night with two girls named Whitney looking for twigs to make a small tree and dirt in which to plant it. With the twigs in hand, I returned to 701 E. Park with a spittoon-like pot. The land had been flattened, so much of the dirt was piled up on the back of the property.  I scooped up some loose soil, on which I had perhaps played as a child, and filled the pot.

Who knows? Maybe that property will someday house a college classroom in which I teach. Only time will tell.

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