A few photos of my childhood home, right before it was sold.
We moved there from a tiny house on the west side of Cleveland. The house here was a small house, a three-bedroom ranch; the Cleveland house was a two-bedroom cape with no basement. We were very excited that we were going to have our own bedrooms! But after my mom’s passing, and with dad not being able to care for himself, we had to put it on the market for the next family.
The dining room was a converted bedroom, formerly my bedroom. The half-wall with balusters used to be a full wall and door. Not shown, a new doorway was added to connect the dining room directly with the kitchen.
The garage was challenging. There were lots of hobby and home improvement tools that hadn’t been used in years. There came a time when my dad couldn’t go fishing anymore, and the gear was just left where it was. It was the same with a lot of tools and other items.
When we moved into the house in 1967, this was raw space. My dad did all the work himself, with help from the neighbor across the street.
The big room had several uses over the years. First, a ping-pong table which was a center of we kids’ world. Later, a pool table — I never was any good at that game, but dad was a champ and had trophies to prove it.
When it came time for grandchildren to visit, it had a TV and video game console. Fold-out beds were provided so they could stay a while.
The workroom had a huge assortment of devices for all kinds of projects from carpentry to auto repair to woodworking to plumbing to electrical. My brother and I picked out some things that we could use in our own homes, but it was really too much to carry anywhere. My back-of-the-envelope calculation was that there were 400,000 drill bits.
I was the last McGee to spend a night in the house. Who would have imagined?
One of the first things I remember was my mom and dad on their hands and knees refinishing the wood floors before we all moved in. They ended up as slick as any bowling alley, such that it was dangerous to walk around in stocking feet. Quite a few of us, and our friends, and our relatives, had their feet slide out from under them walking through that room!
We were able to donate most of the furniture to a good charity, because selling it would have taken time we just didn’t have, and maybe not have brought in very much money. I kept the artwork.
Elyse came up with the idea of tying up the sheer curtains, and it worked so well that the buyers asked us specifically to leave them just as they were.
Luna and my mom only spent a few days together, last year, but they took an immediate liking to each other. We were all (mom included) hoping for another visit, but it wasn’t to be.
There were a lot of items of interest though. Decades worth of calendars that I went through (but didn’t keep). Starting with entries for vacations, shows, visits, projects. Then trailing off as my dad declined so that eventually it was just doctors’ appointments.
But the photo boxes have items that will take me a long time to process. My earliest report cards, letters from school, vaccination records (I was happy to know that yes I was vaccinated for polio, since it’s on a comeback), ancient family albums, my parents’ birth records. One special treasure was an autograph book belonging to my great-grandmother. When she was a child in the first decade of the twentieth century all her friends signed it. In 1924 or so her daughter wrote in it — my grandmother! So in 2022 I added my own entry. Hi Minnie!
Other items I saved were more melancholy. Brass boxes with the ashes of my mom’s parents and sister. She kept them carefully in the basement closet, but it was time to send them off forever to one of their favorites places.
What now?
Dad’s in a good place. We’re going to try and get out to visit him as much as we can, but in the meantime he’s well cared-for .
As an incentive, I bought a membership to the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, so for the next year we can go for free.