Continued from Swimming pools
Return
The years have been long.
My exile in city canyons is ended.
And now I am back in Wyoming
where my heart has been.
The skies are so blue,
the stars so bright,
the sun so light
the air so pure.
I smell the sage on the prairie
the pines in the hills.
Mother’s mood improved along with the elevation. The state of Nebraska tipped upward the farther west we traveled and the air grew thinner, dryer, and cooler. I can only imagine the quickening of mom’s blood as we approached the border. Wyoming—the very sound of it conveys something wild. Although at this time, Joan was unaware that Wyoming was the origin of the wild seed that begot her life.
It was late when we pulled into Laramie. Mom stopped at a motel with a horseshoe sign and a small swimming pool at the north end of town. I think this is where we stayed for several days until our furniture arrived. I know we were there long enough for mom to make friends with the motel owners who had a daughter about my age.
The next day was Sunday. Mom knew the address of the house she’d purchased but did not yet have a key. She was excited and chattered with the motel owners. They knew the house and assured her it would be easy to find. Her eyes sparkled as she danced us out to the car so we could have a look at this first house she’d ever bought. For the past twenty years, she’d lived in apartments, her comings and goings monitored by doormen and nosey neighbors.
The motel people were right. Our house was a snap to find. Early on a Sunday morning, we passed one car on the way to our new house. We drove about 10 blocks from the motel on 3rd Street, turned left on Garfield, drove another six blocks and there we were!
Our “new” house was a seventy-year-old, two-story, the lower half of which was a dull pink stucco, the top was painted, white wood. It perched in a sizeable patch of grass on a corner lot, with a grade school cattycorner and a small neighborhood grocery across Garfield Street. Not only was the grade school a spit away from the house, but Joan’s high school was one block west. The location couldn’t have been better.
The first thing I noticed was the triangular window in the front door. It was too high for me to look through. Mom was first to peer through the window, then Joan. I was bouncing up and down, trying to grab a peek, too. Joan lifted me up so I could peer into the darkened hallway on the other side of the door. What I saw next excited me beyond belief. Stairs! With a fancy banister, painted in shiny red! Oh, I couldn’t wait to see more. We walked around the house, peering into windows where we could. How did we get through that long Sunday—able to look at, walk around, touch, kick, and lick this new home, but unable to go inside?
Rangewriter 
That is indeed the house I rented in 1971-2 from Yry. One of my all time favorites, with lilac trees under all the bedroom windows, high ceilings throughout. Cannot believe all these years later I am learning the amazing story behind those walls. You, dear Rangewriter, have unravelled more threads of the happiest days of my past. I share your mother’s lust for Wyoming, particularly the Laramie area.
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It’s funny. By the time you were living in that house, I was into my teenaged “I am the center of the world” period. I think I knew you were living there, but was not really conscious of it. Glad we can share that connection.
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How exciting to read of the house, your home, and it is heightened by Karen Krause’s recognition. I could feel the frustration of not being able to enter and my memory stirs up the scent of lilacs!
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Thanks, Jane. That house represented FREEDOM for me. Although my mom kept me on a very short leash for a very long time, I at least could run up and down those stairs and in and out of that front door without anyone holding my hand or questioning me. I can only begin to imagine the type of freedom the house represented for my mom.
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How exciting it must have been for your mother to move into own home! In Australia having ‘own home’ is almost like a religion. It was pressed on us after arrival in 1956, that obtaining own home is what life is all about. My dad was very puzzled by that kind of ambition.
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My mother was very focused on land/property ownership. She viewed it as the best investment (aside from gold and jewels, of course) because it is something that is in finite supply. I don’t know if she got this wisdom from her father, or just came up with it on her own. In getting to know my German relatives, I can see that for Americans, the homeownership thing is a much bigger deal than for some other countries. It revolves around a country’s tax structure, and ours has always favored land owners.
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The new place sounds perfect! Your story makes me remember the houses I lived in as a child … funny how I can remember many details from a very young age.
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As I work through this process and then occasionally talk with friends from that period of time, I’m amazed at what details stick like yesterday, while other things have slid right out of my memory like browned taters out of a Teflon pan.
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