THE CRACKER BOX HOUSE

Every once in awhile I get onto Zillow and look at my cracker box house in Spokane. I check to see that she’s all good. I think about her and I turn the camera around to check on Doug’s house for him. They don’t take care of his precious lawn like he did, no one would really, I don’t think many people get on their hands and knees with scissors to perfect the look. But it’s also dying in spots and that would have thrown him into a fit. God, that man loved his lawn 😆

My cracker box recently sold for nearly $250,000 which is fucking crazy! I told my husband and his response was “ The garage though! It’s huge” I guess that means something. They marketed the garage as two car plus a shop. I suppose that could be right but we always used it as four car garage for me and roommates. 

I see the chain link fence and remember the story surrounding that debacle. 

We had the oldest boy but also a baby girl. We wanted a fence so she could grow up and play in the yard without running into the road. Doug was thrilled by the idea too because he and his girlfriend had a baby boy at the same time that we had OM and our families were bestest friends. We could hang out in my yard under the giant tree canopy of shade and watch our kids grown and play.

A woman had bought the house next to mine. We told her that we were going to install a fence and she lost her shit. She thought we’d nip a few inches off her property or something so since our neighbor four houses down had recently had a survey done, and we knew our plot size, we looked up the rest of the sizes then we pulled off of his survey line to eventually land on our property line, we gave her three inches to calm her down. She didn’t calm down. My husband and my mom’s husband put that fence in themselves. She got pissed and long story short, sold the house and moved. Take note, fences don’t make good neighbors but they can make bad ones disappear.

I look at the basement windows. They didn’t used to be there. We installed them because there were only two tiny cat sized windows down there and it scared me that if there was a fire it was inescapable if you couldn’t get to the stairs. My husband and mom’s husband ( For the record, he was her third husband, I was like 20 when they got married and he was in no way my “ stepfather”) used diamond saw blades to cut the concrete. The whole inside of the house looked like it had snowed concrete ash everywhere. I felt safe. 

I look at the stoop in the front of the house. The hours upon hours I sat there from single mom to married mom of three. The record hot summer I was lucky enough to be pregnant through, no AC, so I sat there holding a hose over my head. Me, Doug and Cheryl solving the worlds problems and complaining about unrequited love. The roommates and I playing music on a boom box and dancing, watching a football or frisbee being tossed in the street. Late night drunken conversations about everything on a cool summer night. Watching small children play in a playhouse and sliding down a little slide, picnics. The wrought iron stair railing that still, to this day, is missing one piece!!! The little boy next door, when I first moved in, got his head caught between the railings and couldn’t get back out, those damn ears! 😂 we had to remove the railing!!

I think of how none of the five owners since we sold the place knows any of these things. They don’t know about the hours of darts played in that house, the five pound box of cookies eating by five stoned people playing hearts and spades. 

They don’t know about the baby girl who cut her upper lip in half, clean through, in that tiny back bedroom on her dresser. 

They don’t know about miscarriages and suicide attempts. 

They don’t know about the bottom of the stairs being the place where all my friends would gather to chat. It was THE place we were drawn to. Strange choice.

 They don’t know that my mom died while I lived there or that the house across the street was attached to the cracker box by love and deep friendship and a porch swing that Doug sat on with me just to get through the the day that the bear got married. Me and Doug swinging on the swing until the sun came up the next day. The porch swing where I’d see him just sitting so I’d haul it over to bless him with my company “ Hey, Trace!” 

The stories a house could tell. Joy, warmth, laughter, sadness, pain, eagerness, things best left untold lest they cause embarrassment ☺️ But those are some of the best stories too. Birth, death, falling in love, family whether it’s blood, marriage or chosen friends. 

That cracker box house. I loved it there.

Pictures?

Me