Grandma's house

Grandma and Grandpa built their two bedroom house around 1910 as young newlyweds and lived there the rest of their lives. My mom was their only child and she lived there with them until she married Dad at the almost-spinster age of 30.

The house had a front porch with a swing and a piano in the living room and a cast iron claw foot tub in the one bathroom.  It had a cellar filled with Grandma's canned preserves, made with fruit gathered from the apple, plum and cherry trees in the back yard and the next door neighbors' apricot tree.  There was an entrance directly into the cellar from the back yard and a garage that opened with two side hinged doors.  I'm told that in its younger days, the maple tree in the front yard produced real maple syrup.  The yard was filled with lilacs and hollyhocks grew wild along the property line.  The home burned wood for heat until Grandma converted it to gas in the 1960s, thus skipping coal fuel completely.

Some of my happiest memories are visiting Grandma and Grandpa in that sweet, sweet home.