Our Lafountain Street Home in the 1940’s, Part 2

The front door entered into the living room, and immediately to the left there was a door that went into Grandma Frank’s bedroom. It had two windows, one to the front and the other looked north to the alley that bordered the house. A second door from her room lead into the dining room. The family spent a lot of time there. Mom and Dad found a big dining room table that sat in the middle and filled much of the room. The table seemed gigantic to me though it was probably no more than 4 by 7 feet. It had a dark walnut finish and I expect antique hunters would be overjoyed to find it and its matching buffet. Don and I used to play in that room. I remember we once played “cowboy and Indians” and had a shoot-out. I was over by the buffet at our bedroom door, crouching down and shooting through the legs of the buffet. I was being killed repeatedly, and would clutch my heart and shout, “You got me, you bastard!”, and then roll over on by back and die. After the second or third time of dying, Grandma Frank ask me where I got that?? I said I didn’t know, I just heard it somewhere. She told me that “bastard” wasn’t a nice word, and I shouldn’t use it anymore. I said, “Okay”.

The dining room was on the north side of the house, and every room was accessible from it - except for the bathroom. The bath was stuck in the back southeast corner - opposite the alley. One had to either go through us kid’s bedroom, or Mom and Dad’s bedroom to get to it. Another oddity was a large closet right in the middle of the house. It was about four feet wide and ten feet long. We stored a lot things in it, including a roll-away-bed. You entered it from the dining room and could walk straight through into Mom and Dad’s bedroom. I never thought much about the strangeness of all this while I lived there. I guess I was too young to realize the floor plan was a bit impractical. I think the house was built before indoor plumbing came along, and the bath was a retrofit. There was a door from the dining room that went outside to a small porch beside the alley. It was used more than any other in the house. The kitchen was narrow and long, and on the alley side. A door from it opened onto the back yard and a walk lead under the grape arbor. Dad remodeled kitchen after the war. I still remember him standing between the open floor joists in an early stage of its work.

There was a stairway down into the basement, but for the life of me I cannot recall where it was located, and there is no one left alive that can tell me. I first thought the stairs had to be accessed from the dining room. I seemed to remember it that way, but the more I thought about it as I drew the floor plans it just didn’t seem possible. I decided to locate them at the rear of the kitchen, near the back door. Don and my bedroom isn’t quite right either, but the stairs seemed reasonable, and if historians can periodically revise history, then I should also be able to rewrite it to suit myself. I guessed at the dimensions by measuring off a Google Map photo, and then calculated the house area to be about 1350 square feet.

The house was a bit small for two growing boys, so we moved across town in 1950. I really missed the old house and neighborhood. I remember riding my bike over there that summer. I could not find any of the kids about. I peddled around the block, through the alley, and then went home. I tried it once more sometime later that summer, or maybe it was the next, but had no better luck. I didn’t try any more after that.