The House on Montesquieu

     It smelled of stale smoke, dog, and a food cooking on the
stove. The interior hadn’t been decorated in years. The house was pretty old,
but it still possessed that cozy, lived in quality. Its oldness and the mixture
of smells simply added to its charm.

     The living room was nothing fancy: television, radio, a sofa, and two chairs. One of the chairs was of course - Maw Maw’s chair. The spot where she watched her story, worked her puzzles, did her crocheting, and enjoyed an afternoon cigarette. The chair is where she would take you to yesteryear telling you about the old days. She could keep you
amused and captivated with every word. The stories were long and plentiful, but
I loved listening to them.   

    There was the back room that hadn’t been utilized since my mom and uncle still lived
there. It was the bedroom that turned into a junk room. But to me it was a
wonderful junk room. It housed Paw Paw’s caps and fishing stuff. Then there were
old clothes hung along one whole side of the room – stuff that hadn’t been worn
in years. Mixed in with this assortment of apparel was the costume my mom wore
when she rode in Venus back in the late-sixties. Scattered around were some old
toys my brother and I used to play with. Despite the hodge podge of items, the
room was mostly filled with must and dust.

    The kitchen was a small and quaint.  There always seemed to be a big pot of
something cooking on the stove: gumbo, jambalaya, red beans, or meatballs and
spaghetti. In the center of the kitchen table was a big, glass bowl that would
be filled with bananas and assorted fruit. Then there was the dishwasher. The
appliance quit operating years earlier so Maw Maw turned it into giant drawer
that housed her plastic bowls and Tupperware items. Up on the kitchen counter,
Maw Maw had a little spot where she stashed her stale bread that she was saving
to either feed the birds or make a batch of bread pudding. The kitchen was Maw
Maw’s true working place. She operated it like her own little diner – Izzy’s
Diner.

  The back yard was huge. To a kid it seemed
like another City Park. There was the cement bird bath located in the back corner that attracted some of the prettiest birds I ever saw. There were plenty of trees. There was the
big, Sycamore tree that decorated the yard with its huge leaves. There was a
tall, Pecan tree that stood next to the back fence. There was also a fig tree
that stood in the back corner of the yard. Maw Maw and Aunt Justine would use
those figs to make fig preserves. Except for when she fed the birds or hung the
laundry on the clothes line, the backyard was mostly Paw Paw’s domain. That’s
where he worked his garden, drank his beer, and told his fishing stories. He
would stay back there for hours bagging the aluminum cans he was going to
recycle. The little money he received for them he would save up to buy his
fishing supplies or to use for Happy Hour at Lehrmann’s Bar – where the real
fishing stories got told.

  There were so many little things I remember about that house – the floor furnace in the hallway that would get so hot it seemed like you could grill burgers on it. There was the front room that contained Maw Maw’s ceramic bird collection and family photos - mostly of her
four grandsons, her sewing machine, and a huge picture of Cypress
Gardens that covered the whole back wall. The room smelled like candles. Maw Maw always lit a candle she whenever she fried fish.

  In can recall the last time I was ever in the house. Maw Maw had passed away several months earlier and my mom and uncle were getting the house ready to be sold. I took one last stroll through the house reminiscing about days gone by. As I looked into each room there were so many memories. I couldn’t help but be heavy-hearted because Maw Maw was nowhere and yet she was everywhere.