Intro to House Story

My favorite childhood home was a two story white house in rural West Virginia. The house was built in the 1800’s by my grandma’s great aunt’s husband. The house was sold out of the family for years then in the 1950, my grandma’s parents bought the house. In 1969, my grandparents bought it from them. Through the years the old house had served as a hotel or bed and breakfast-type establishment. There was a train station right out front for many years. (But not in my lifetime.)
I moved into this house in 1975 when Mom packed up her three youngest children and moved back to West Virginia. She and Dad had divorced a couple of years earlier and she decided she wanted a stronger support system. We moved into this two-story white house with her parents whom I didn’t know very well. I had met them several times before, but it was almost a year before I felt comfortable enough with them to call them Grandma and Grandpa.
I love this house. And I love that I grew up with my grandparents so close.
The front yard was a very small patch of grass between our front porch and the gravel lane. Our house was the last house on this end of the lane. The gravels were actually small smooth stones. I could sit for hours examining them carefully. I picked out the prettiest ones—or sometimes the ugliest ones when I felt sorry for them—to keep. I remember one time, after a particularly long and hard rain, building a dam out of those stones. I watched how the water slowed as it reached the little dam then flowed faster again after it went over the dam.