Memory Monday: The piano and me: Part 3--Making a house a home

And then it was gone from my everyday life. I went to college. Pianos abounded but played by people far more talented than I. I hadn't the nerve to sit at one, no matter how deep the urge. (Secretly I think Miss Tennie must have planted some version of "your fingers will always itch for a keyboard" in the garden room air just to get us back for not knowing our theory.)

But I digress. No easily playable piano for seven years. Then, we move to Georgia, to an apartment complex with sets of 8 apartments per building. Four on each side, up and down, with a breezeway. We were the first people to live in ours. There was practically a new house smell! Less than a month after we moved in, a family, the first of many, moved in next door. They had two teenage daughters and a piano. It was an older upright, one the girls had painted yellow and decorated with daisies and flower-power prints. It was in the breezeway and it was for sale.

Seventy five dollars later, it was rolled into what passed for our dining room. It even had a matching bench! It also needed to be tuned in the worst way and something had to be done about the yellow and the flowers.

Figuring the punishment fit the crime of painting it in the first place, I hired the teens to help me strip it and restain it. It was made of beautiful quarter-sewn dark oak. I had now doubled the price of my newest acquisition. But that wasn't all. Having basically put the cart before the horse, I found a piano tuner. Perhaps I should have done that first before the effort of making it into a pretty piece of useless furniture?

He was an older man and quickly informed me that even upon its birth in 1915 or so, my piano had not been first class. I accepted that. I wasn't a first class player. There was no use in casting pearls before... well, you get the idea. Several hours later, having now more than tripled the price of my piano, he played it until it sang.

He left, I sat down and played, probably out of a hymnal, or something borrowed. Maybe Mother had already mailed me my music. I just know I had it and our apartment, far from Texas and all that was familiar, finally felt real. I had a piano and had, in many ways, come home.

Thirty years in one place

This weekend marks the anniversary of our homecoming. We'd spent seven years away from the nest area in North Texas, three of them in Georgia. It had been a good experience, allowing us to set up our married life and subsequent children at a distance from the families. My husband's professional training being over, we loaded up our two vehicles, two babies, two dogs and, with the aid of a sister-in-law who drove faster the closer we got to home, we headed out.

I'm not sure if we arrived home July 3 or 4. There was a huge banner above our door welcoming us back. The SIL's boyfriend had put it there, and I doubt he was welcoming us. It had been an arduous drive since the speed limit was down, gas prices were up, and gas itself was rationed.

Did I think, as we gratefully pulled two vehicles into the drive of our new home, that I would still be in it 30 years later? I wasn't 30 years old myself; I had no concept of the time involved. Thirty years was, well, a very long time. Who knew what it would bring? We'd already had lots of changes in our lives, most of them wrapped around two little boys and the hope that a successful career was on the verge of beginning.

In 30 years, I've watched my sons grow up. They're Eagle Scouts like their dad, college graduates, doing well in their own careers and marriages. I've two grandchildren. My spouse has seen his career grow and change with the times. All good, as the elder son would say. I dared myself to write a romance novel, then more. To be published, and I am. I've volunteered with Scouting, the church, the regional hospital, the public library.

Over the years, we never entertained the idea of moving from the house we started with. We have redecorated, remodeled, repurposed all of it. Besides the bathrooms and kitchen, only two rooms retain their original duties. In 2001-02, we gutted the place and lived to tell, marriage in tact!

Then we told ourselves it would look extremely shabby in another 20 years and we'd have to do it all over again. Let's see, 20 years from 2002... I'll be... ready.

I'll never pay a dollar a gallon for gas... (alas!) again

It's July 1979. America is knee-deep in an energy crisis and the Sisk family is over 700 miles from home in Georgia and about to move back after a three year sojourn there. Things have gotten to the point that the ugly word 'rationing' has reared its head, and some states, such as Texas, have implemented even/odd gas-buying days dictated by your license plate. The exception is for out-of-state cars and since we will be traveling across four states in just such vehicles, we have a tiny bit of relief in the surety of being able to get in line to fill up.

We are an unsightly 10-year-old Ford pick-up, a 3 year-old Chevy Nova, two cocker spaniels, a toddler, a newborn, and a 16-year-old sister-in-law not sure how she got roped into this "family aid" business. Then there's us, the two who've done all the worrying and packing and planning. I'm the one in the Nova, hunkered down in the passenger seat breast-feeding the newborn while his brother alternates with the dogs between the pick-up and us. The closer the sister-in-law gets to home and the boyfriend, the faster she drives.

I don't remember where we spent the night, but we would have had to do so for our sanity. We pulled toward home for two reasons: we could walk to the grocery if need be and the furniture just might beat us there. (It didn't.) We calculated gas and reserves and talked on the CB between the two vehicles.

We pulled across the border into Texas and saw the price of gas was 99 cents/gallon. Not on your life, we said. We'll never pay that! It'll be cheaper somewhere else, but we think we can get home anyway.

And we did. Pulled in on fumes.

Things evened out. The price went down. The rationing went away. Eventually the speed limit would go back up to 70 mph. It was a harrowing ride home and I remember only fear, mixed with gratitude that we could get home at all. But the one thing I would like to see again? Ninety-nine cent gas. Because I truly will never pay a dollar a gallon for gas.

Again.