Notes on 3180 Riverside Drive,
Wellsville, NY 14895, Part III of III
Remembering the house as we look to sell it.
STORY JAR
For a period of years, I wrote a
column for the Cuba Patriot. These stories happened on Riverside Drive.
The Sewing Room
WELLSILLE: We knew some of the history of our house
from people who studied Wellsville’s past and from the evidence behind the
plaster. We think that William Middaugh built the house and planted our towering pines and an
apple orchard on the land that was his farm. The first kitchen was a separate
building but the current one became a part of the house after machine made
nails were about.
The fireplaces were replaced with a
monstrous, coal furnace and radiators in 1912 about twenty years before Leonard
Jones enclosed the porch and planted his hole-in-one tree. Most recently, we
ripped the whole thing apart in 1989/90 after our time in Malaysia.
We didn’t know about specific rooms
but liked combining facts with stories so guessed that one room was used as an
examination room by the country doctor who once lived and worked here.
Placed
between a large room with an entrance from the porch and a small bathroom that
was clearly added later, this room and its closet seemed a likely examination
room. For us, it would become a sewing room.
We ripped out the exterior walls to
remove one window and replace another while adding wiring, a heating system and
insulation.The interior walls needed some finishing touches so, while the kids
were in school, joint compound and I kept company.
One day after school, Em and Jay
found me on the “don’t stand above this step” top of the ladder trying to sand
near the ceiling. After saying hello, they went to the kitchen where Emilie
hoped my Donna Reed persona had left brownies and I stretched for just one more
swipe at a rough spot. They heard the rattle of the ladder, the scream, the
thud.
Jay ran into the room and, as soon
as he saw me, started shouting, “Mom, you need 911. Mrs. Ewell told us all
about calling 911. Where’s the phone? Mom? Can I call 911? Can I call, Mom?
Mom!”
While I was groaning and trying to
think which limb should try to move first, Emilie told Jay to hush and tried to
see if I still functioned in some way. My voice refused to make coherent sounds
to match the ideas forming in my head. Jay ran for the phone.
Well,
I didn’t need 911 that day but I did need a taller, more stable addition to our
stepladder collection so that we could reach the twelve-foot ceiling without
clattering to the floor.
That
room seemed suited to wallpaper so we went searching for a deal on discontinued
paper. At Black’s store in Olean, a yellow paper with a delicate pattern of
pink, blue and white flowers seemed to sing that it was made for a sewing room.
At a closeout store, odd lots of paper can get jumbled together but after a
thorough search we were able to tote twelve matching rolls of that perfect
paper to our car.
Later,
Rick and I employed our regular wallpaper hanging system in the sewing room. He
measured, then I cut and pasted. He hung, matched and swore while I rinsed the
sponge, trashed the scraps and turned up the radio.
All was going well until I opened
the third or fourth roll and realized that there were two different patterns of
wallpaper. All had the same batch number, label and colors, but there were two
different designs. Now what?
It actually worked out. There were
nine rolls of one design and three of another.
We were able to hang the first design on three walls and the second on
the fourth wall. You’d never notice if I didn’t tell you.
Now, surrounded by yellow wallpaper,
there is not only a sewing machine but also a computer. Hanging on the walls
are tidbits of family history including old photos, Grandma Rollin’s button top
shoes and assorted curiosities from Borneo. Taped inside the closet is Jay’s
pledge, signed ten years ago, stating that he will not be angry with me for
letting him quit piano lessons.
I wonder what will be in this room
in another fifty years.
A
Mouse-Scented Room
WELLSVILLE: In
an old, country house with a stone foundation, an occasional mouse will find
its way inside and decide that life there is better. Such a mouse will take up residence in a wall
and inconveniently die there leaving its legacy, a permeating aroma.
I knew from experience that burning
a candle in such a room would take away the odor so, when my sewing room
started to smell like a dead mouse, I tried it. It didn’t work. Several candles
burned, sputtered and died with no success.
I decided to clean and wash everything
in that room until the only smells left were Lysol and shine. I started by clearing the table, an area that
had become a dumping ground for papers, clothing to be repaired and some small
boxes. One box, I discovered, was not
empty.
It was during our pet mouse
population explosion. One mouse had died
and Jay, about seven at the time, had confused my sewing room with a
mausoleum. He had a dead friend waiting
for spring burial in a cardboard box.
Opening the box reduced my curiosity
as totally as relocating the mouse to the shed cured the odor problem.
Apples,
Holes and Branches
September 12,
2001
WELLSVILLE: Peter Salvatore came over to ask if we had
noticed that the old apple tree had fallen. We hadn’t but Rick got the chain
saw and went to work. It was sad to see the tree leave us. There are memories in its branches and roots.
The apple tree was one of a pair
that the children had climbed when they were young. Our first house had only
huge trees with no footholds for easy access so there wasn’t any tree climbing
in that yard. Our second house was in Malaysia and there were palm trees, also
not easy to climb. But, this house had the old apple trees with lower branches
just a hop off the ground and other branches like steps waiting for young
explorers.
When the house was empty, there were
often legs hanging among the branches of that tree. Em would climb up to read
and Jay to annoy her.
We were told that William Middaugh
had planted trees and built the house in the mid 1800’s. His apple orchard is
now represented by a few trees in our backyard and that belonging to Rob and
Tammy Christman. William died in 1881and left the house and all of the trees
and land to his children. The farm eventually became our neighborhood and most
of the trees were gone by the time we moved in.
Several years ago, when our cat,
Aloysius died, Jay was heartbroken. I suggested that he go out to the apple
tree and dig a hole to bury Aloysius while Em and I prepared a coffin. Jay
asked how big a hole was needed and I told him to dig until he felt better.
When Em and I started our procession
to the apple tree, Jay’s legs were as deep in the hole as they had once been
high in the tree. We could have buried several animals in that hole. It was an
impressive feat considering the many intersecting roots of the tree and the
small size of the boy. We held our ceremony and said farewell to Aloysius under
the apple tree.
Another significant event involved a
ground hog hole. Ground hogs could dig faster, if not deeper, than Jay and
their favorite spot was under that tree. Rick said that the dropping apples
provided the ground hog’s version of home delivery so they were endlessly
attracted to that spot.
Rick worked to reduce our ground hog
population because of the holes they left everywhere, holes that would break a
running child’s leg. He would take a dead ground hogs, stuff it into the hole
and shovel in the dirt only to find the hole open and active again in a few
days. We lost count over time but at least a dozen ground hogs were buried in
the one hole.
The ground around the tree is lumpy
still because Jay’s hole was never smoothly filled in and the ground hog hotel
was opened so many times that there is a permanent dip in the soil. Two major
branches fell this week and the main trunk is split one would hope that Mr.
Middaugh would have been satisfied to know how long the orchard lasted.
The Tractor
and the Pillows,
published 2001
WELLSVILLE: When
we returned to the house in the early afternoon one Saturday, we found all the
garage doors open as well as the house doors and all the windows.
In the kitchen, the stereo was
blaring with window-shaking intensity but no children could be found. Jay was
in eighth grade and had spent the night at Max’s house but should have gotten
home before us.
 |
The day of the tractor and the pillows.
Max Oglesbee, Em Hardman, Jay Hardman |
Emilie was a senior but had gone to
work at the nursing home that morning. She should have gotten back but her car
wasn’t there yet.
Someone must have opened everything
and turned on the music and our money was on Jay. With hands over ears for
protection, Rick approached the shaking stereo and put it out of its misery. We
walked out to the back yard – easy to do with the door open- and listened.
There was no sign of anything but a
faint howling came from the pinewoods.
Was that also the putting of a tractor motor? Our tractor was missing
and so was the cart.
Could they be working in the woods?
Hauling trash? What did they do to make that much trash? Thankfully all the
trees were still standing. The howling turned into singing and then the tractor
emerged from the woods. Max was driving and Jay was sitting in the cart.
Their voices were shouting –
singing, screaming – and they were so intent in their meandering drive and
antics that they never noticed us until they were a few feet away. Their faces
changed from joy to pure guilt.
Other than the leaving the house
unattended for who knew how long and blaring the stereo, something else naughty
had been done.
There was a little bit of yelling.
You could like guess what was said.
“What were you doing?”
“This tractor isn’t a toy.”
“Are you crazy?”
They put the tractor away but seemed
full of some kind of wild, unreasonable, ready-to-destroy, spring fever energy.
I had just bought some new sofa pillows so gave them the old pillows to destroy.
It seems reasonable. Little did I know.
It started with a sort of pillow
fight that seemed cute and harmless. By then Em had arrived and I took photos
of the three of them with the pillows. Thinking that the world was safe for
Jay, Max and others, I put away the things that had been acquired that morning.
When I next looked out in the backyard, there was pillow fluff everywhere.
Max was standing on a stump and had
an ax over his head. He jumped off while swinging at the pillow remains that
were nearly buried in the soft grass. I could just see someone putting the
mattock into a skull or removing chunks of leg so I went out screaming,
“Stop!” a year’s worth of fear in
one word.
 |
Far right is Max and goofiest is Jay. I am behind the group. This
is the Wellsville High School Debate Team
in our kitchen with the window rescued from the
high school behind them. |
No, they didn’t think they could
hurt themselves or each other. No, it didn’t seem dangerous. Yes, the tools
looked like a perfectly reasonable way of dealing with old pillows. No, they
hadn’t noticed that there was pillow fluff as far as the eye could see.
I asked them to pick up the remains
of the mutilated pillows that were around the yard. It was difficult. Max had
hit a pillow so hard that it was jammed more than a foot down into the ground
into a small round hole.
Astounded, I asked, “Max, that must
have been a lot of work to hammer a pillow into the ground so far. Why did you
keep pounding on it? Wasn’t it
exhausting?”
“Yeah,” he said, “now that you
mention it, I’m pretty tired.”
The pillow pieces took a long time
to pick up but I didn’t dare leave those boys. They had gone from carousing to
pummeling and I was afraid of what was next.
It was a Jay and Max experience to
remember and was, after all, far less stressful than getting a roll of paper
towels out of the downstairs toilet.
Bennett will serve free hot
beverages and cookies from 5 pm until they are scooped up. Enjoy nibbling while
choosing from among these stocking stuffers: Dr. Bonner’s soaps, cookies,
brownies and other individually wrapped treats, chocolate covered cashews,
almonds and/or espresso beans or chocolate candy bars. 
