The "House With A Soul" Story

It was an ordinary day.  Looking at a few photos from the first house that Carol and I purchased about half a year after we were married in 1967.  Semi-detached English Tudor style with three floors and a detached one-car garage to the rear of the house.  And, I'm convinced that the house had a soul!  Exactly what would that be when talking about a home.  Well, there were little idiosyncrasies or peculiarities that made our house our home.  Little things such as a small hole in the basement wall, that connected our house to our neighbors, so that when it rained and our neighbors basement evidently filled with water, the water would steam through the pencil thin hole into our basement and down the nearby drain.  

925 Janet Avenue in Grandview Heights

Kids though that was so neat.  Then there was the tall chimney that allowed bats to enter our house and take flight inside the house.  That also caused quite a stir from both the kids and my wife.  The neat little stained glass window in the front door and the mail slot that was about a foot off the floor both made our front door something special.  Most houses have special features that no matter who owns them, the features hopefully will remain for generations of home owners.  Our kitchen offered a few special features that will forever be remembered by our family.  One was a built-in small pantry that featured a door that carried the heights of our children as well as others who lived in the house before us.  One feature we created when we remodeled our kitchen was added two ceiling beams for ornamentation.  They were hallowed styrofoam which we glued to the ceiling.  Wasn't long before we heard footsteps and chewing in the ceiling.  Almost positive the local mice population made a home inside the beams.  I also built a window greenhouse that was used for my wife's plants and herbs.  The current owners of the home in Grandview Heights of Manheim Township, Lancaster, PA still use it for plant growth.  Then there were those three steps on the third floor stairwell that always gave away an after curfew arriver no matter how hard they tried to avoid them.  But the one thing that my kids would say they remember most about the house in which they all came home to after being born was the dining room ceiling light that I made out of walnut wood and red and blue plexiglas.  Square light that hung from the ceiling and iluminated our dining room table.  They all loved it and when we moved we had to take it down and buy another light to replace it.  Not sure who has the old one right now, but someday it may grace the ceiling of one of their homes. Either that or I read that all wrong and all the wanted to do was trash the light so it would never be a part of the old place.  These little special touches gave our home a soul that no other home will ever have.  It was another extraordinary day in the life of an ordinary guy.