The Attic in My Memory
The second house I lived in was a three-story house south of University Avenue on 36th Street, Des Moines, Iowa– the house with the attic of my memory. I have only scant recollections of my first house on 32nd street and University. It was next to a Reeds Ice Cream shop and today the whole corner is an apartment building and a McDonalds.
The house on 36th street holds positive memories and life altering ones too. My folks bought that house on the GI bill for a monthly mortgage payment of $89 a month. My carpenter grandfather, Clarence, Ga to me, and my father built a wobbly, scary, fire exit from the third-floor attic apartment, which I never set foot in. We rented the top-floor attic apartment to a young woman and her son. She was divorced from Gil Snyder, a well-known local banjo player and lived off and on with her boyfriend Vern Gonya, the professional wrestler.
The main entrance to the apartment passed through the living room, and up the stairs past my bedroom. There were two phones in the house, one in the living room and the other a black dial party line telephone set on a shelf on the back of the attic door—a cord snaked along the second-floor hallway wall. When the renters talked on the phone they sat on the attic steps. When anyone needed to use the phone, they politely picked up the other phone, except Dad who was less friendly, and declared they needed to use the phone. As a party line phone, others in the neighborhood could also break in and sometimes just listened in.
My bedroom on the second floor, was steps away from the attic comings and goings. It was dark and mysterious and I never set foot in the apartment. That someone could live in a third-floor apartment, accessible by walking through our living room or a creaky wabbly wooden three-story stairway, icy in the winter, was the attic in my memory and my novel, The Attic.
