I woke up around five this morning after having had a dream. In this dream, I was in a bathroom about to take a shower. Not just any bathroom, it was the one that was in my grandparent’s house. I could not go back to sleep because I kept recalling vivid memories of this bathroom. Strange! Yea, I know!! My grandparents have been deceased for several years and I have not been inside this house in a very loooong time!
My brother and I enjoyed many extended visits with my grandparents during school vacations. And they went something like this:
During the daylight hours we played outside. That’s right! Played outside! This is something foreign to our children. There was no central air, so it was usually cooler outdoors especially if the wind was blowing any at all. There were only a couple of “boring” channels on the TV, no video games, and no cell phones - only a four party phone line. There was no super Wal-Mart or indoor malls. Period. And not even a grocery store close enough to “run” to. A day in town took just that: a day. They lived on a dirt road in a rural area surrounded by livestock, ponds, fields, and forests. Outside, there were so many places to explore and ways to be creative.
But nighttime was a completely different story. There were no street lights or close neighbors here in the middle of nowhere. So, the safest place for us to be was inside between the confines of the front door and the back door. Safely away from the NOISES we KNEW we HEARD coming out of the pitch darkness and safe from the CREATURES we THOUGHT we SAW lurking in the pitch darkness.
Or was it the safest place? This brings me back to the bathroom. Not literally, just in thought.
The house originally did not have a bathroom. It was an after-thought, an add-on. Actually it was added on to the back porch. This porch was the same length as the house. Opening the back doorway located off the kitchen here is what you saw: A few feet in front of you was the back yard that you could see through a flimsy, ill fitting screen door with a hook-type latch. (Now that I think back, it is quite comical to remember that my grandmother always made sure it was locked.) There was linoleum on the floors. It was the old kind that came in rolls not in squares, and it was floral and worn if I remember correctly. To the right was a “real” door leading into the bathroom and to the left was a make-shift door made out of a curtain leading into the pantry/storage room.
A trip to the bathroom at night was NOT just a trip to the bathroom. It was our very own virtual video game of survival: Get in - Get out - Before being captured and drug off by the bogeyman.
LEVEL 1: To make it past this level you had to make it into the bathroom before being captured by the you know who from behind the curtain door or from behind the “locked” screen door.
Keep in mind there were no light switches to flip! Exposed light bulbs hung from sockets on the ceiling with long strings hanging from them. So you had to actually walk inside the dark room, feel for the string and pull it down before a light would come on.
Also, during the winter, you HAD to close the door leading back into the kitchen because if the temperature was 25 degrees outside, it was also 25 degrees on the back porch slash bathroom slash storage room. So once the door was closed and you were on the porch, you were on your own!
LEVEL 2: Surviving the bathroom. Once inside the bathroom, you were still not safe! It was crude. Nothing fancy. Only the basics. A bathtub, sink, mirror, toilet, and a space heater. No vents! Enough said! And then there were the creepy crawly things that you had to watch out for if they dared brave this non-ventilated room through a hole in the floor.
LEVEL 3: The third and final level. Leaving the bathroom and once again, getting past the screen door (the “locked” screen door) and the “curtain” door ( I always checked to see if it was moving.) and back into the safety of the kitchen.
Thankfully I survived! And lived to tell about it! Aren’t you glad?
Actually, the bathroom trips are not the only memories I have of my childhood days at my grandparents house. And this makes me glad!!
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