House has truly always been home

The anniversary was, I believe, last week.

Thirty-six years ago, our family moved into the house that my wife and I still call home.

The weather was mild during those first weeks of December in 1981, a pleasant change for those of us who had survived the rough winter of 1977 and the historic blizzard of 1978.

That made it easier to corral friends to help with the move.

As I recall, I leaned pretty heavily on the county prosecutor’s office when it came to recruiting manpower.

Prosecutor Bob Clamme was on hand and ready to go to work. So was deputy prosecutor Joel Roberts, who lived just a couple of doors away from us and is still a neighbor on North Street. And my great friend John — “J.T.” — Phillips from Dunkirk was there to help as well.

J.T. and I had met on a volatile picket line during a confrontation in a strike at Indiana Glass Co. in Dunkirk. At that point, he was in the odd situation of being a union member on strike while his wife was working as a secretary in the company’s head office.

But by the time of our move, John was the prosecutor’s investigator, the guy who acted as an intermediary, liaison and occasional interpreter in relations between the prosecutor and local law enforcement officers.

Their pay for an afternoon of work: Pizza and some cold beer at the end of the job.

The house itself had a family history. That is, a history in my family.

When my Haynes grandparents, my mother’s parents, built their house at 516 N. Pleasant St. in 1900 on what was then pretty much bare farm ground on the west side of Portland, they needed a place to store the horses, buggies and the rest. So a small barn was built as well.

About 20 years later, not long after my mother was born, the little barn was converted to a bungalow as the summer home of my great-grandmother, Sarah Kelly Jay. And just short of 30 years after that, it’s where my parents were living when I was born.

There’s other family lore as well: My aunt Jean and uncle Jim Luginbill were married in our living room, with my grandfather Ronald conducting the service. And when there was a small fire at the Presbyterian manse at some point in the 1930s, grandfather and grandmother Ronald lived in the house while repairs were made.

So maybe we were destined to end up in this particular house on this particular street in this particular town.

We’d bought the house — or, more precisely, we were in the process of buying the house on contract — from Lou and Eula Wasmuth. Their son, Alex, was in a nursing home by then as a degenerative condition took its inevitable toll; and the Wasmuths had moved to Arizona.

When they made the decision to move, they offered us the right of first refusal. And we jumped at the chance.

So it came to pass that December Saturday 36 years ago, that it was time to move in.

It wasn’t a long move, just down the street really. But any move involves more work than anyone ever expects.

This one was no exception.

Still, my recollection is that we got it done pretty quickly.

Sure, things weren’t in the right place and weren’t put away. But by late-afternoon, Bob and Joel and J.T. and I were sprawled on the floor of the family room watching some forgettable college football game.

And that’s probably where you’ll find me Saturday, though not sprawled on the floor.

The kids are grown — scattered from Boston to Bloomington — and the house is emptier these days with just the two of us.

But you know what? It’s still home. 

In its way, it always has been and probably always will be.