I found a real estate listing of my Grandmother’s house yesterday. There was a single picture of the front of the house, a blurb about “handyman’s special, fix or flip”, and a list price of $15K. My grandmother lived in a side by side duplex. Gram and Grandpa lived on one side. Her siblings – Aunt Es, Uncle Bob and Uncle Russ – lived on the other side. Aunt Es’s side was originally her parent’s home.
My grandmother’s house was where my extended family met for Sunday dinners and holiday meals. She’d cooks roast beef, turkey, or chicken, with homemade gravy, make instant mashed potatoes, frozen peas, brownies, and vanilla pudding. Gram was not the greatest cook. Nonetheless, we’d have Sunday dinner at noon with Gram, Grandpa, my mother, my mom’s siblings- Uncle Mick, Aunt Mary Jo, my sister and me. These dinners were always full of tension. Uncle Mick or Mary Jo would start some shit, my Gram would yell at them, they’d talk back to her and then Grandpa would get riled up. I usually couldn’t wait to get out of there.
But the rest of the time at Gram’s was wonderful. She was retired and spent her days talking on the phone, watching gam shows on TV, reading, knitting, smoking and shopping. I loved to sit with her in her recliner and watch the Price Is Right or Matchgame while eating Chicken in the Biscuit crackers with sour cream and onion dip.
Sometimes we slept over at Gram’s house on the weekend. On Friday’s during lent, we’d get fish dinners from the Fish Market. On Saturdays, my Grampa would call before he left the White Swan bar to ask if we wanted him to bring home a pizza as a late night snack.
My mother, two brothers and sister were all raised in Gram’s house. My sister and I spent many weekends there when we lived in Tamaqua and then summers there for years afterward.
It was a warm, cozy home. Even when my Uncle Mick was around creating havoc, Gram took care of us.
They had a side porch where I’d sit in the summers with my Grandpa sneaking sips of his beer from ice cold, sweaty bottles while we watched the blinking antenna lights on the far away mountain and he told me stories of his youth, work and football. I’d run into the yard to catch fireflies in a jar.
They always had a dog which they kept crated in the kitchen corner. In the yard, my Gram had rows and rows of thorny rosebushes. They smelled great and blossomed a vibrant crimson color but I was always getting pricked by the thorns.
When I was a preteen, Gram died of a heart attack. Uncle Bob had died years earlier. A few years later Uncle Russ died. My Grampa sold his house and moved into Uncle Russ’s apartment above Aunt Es. I don’t remember who moved into Gram’s house.
My Aunt Es died when I was in college. Then my Grandfather died. I don’t know whether anyone sold Es’s house or if it went into a Sheriff sale. I suspect my Aunt Mary Jo and Uncle Mick sold it.
I think about Tamaqua a lot. Even though I only lived there until I was 7 and then spent summer vacations there for another 6 years, Tamaqua was what I consider my idyllic childhood hometown. I loved it there. I loved my family, my friends, my school, the little stores, the parks and the woods.
When I get the nostalgia bug, I look up Tamaqua online. There’s not much to see. It’s a dilapidated, run down former coal town. The people who lived there are poor. A few of the iconic places from my youth are still there – the community pool, Tommy’s Sub shop and Grande Pizza. Most are long gone. The churches have closed. Even the Oddfellows cemetery has run out of money and volunteers to maintain itself.
Except for my Aunt Mary Jo, who I was never close too, all of my relatives have passed away. My three best friends moved away. Maybe some kids I knew in 1st and 2nd grade are still there, but I’ll never know.
I wish I could go back to that time when I was a little kid living in the best small town. I hadn’t a care in the world. I was surrounded by family who loved me. I knew everyone on town and they all knew me. There were dozens of kids on our street to play freeze tag and hide’n’seek with until the fire station blew the curfew alarm and we all had to run home for the night.
Everything I loved there is just a memory.
If buying that house and moving back would bring it back, I’d do it in a heartbeat.
It won’t. So I’ll just cherish my memories.