The past is never dead. It’s not even past. - William Faulkner
It's Been Forty Years
by Margaret Liddell
Editor’s Note: The following is an excerpt from Margaret Liddell’s soon-to-be published memoir, working title Welcome to Chillicothe.
July 1996 -- The Dream
It’s been forty years since I lived in this small town in south-central Ohio. A wooden sign announces, “Welcome to Chillicothe, population 22,114.” New stores with different names inhabit the spaces of the old ones that I once knew. Nowadays folks don’t shop on Paint Street anymore; they go instead to Route 23, east of town, where Walmart, MacDonald’s, the Hampton Inn and other American brand names abound. Cheap and fast replaced quaint and nostalgic. The smell of the paper mill, greetings from voices with southern Ohio twangs and July’s smothering heat send my thoughts into tender remembrances of life in Chillicothe.
We lived at 25 West 7th Street in a rented two-story house that sat on the southwest corner of a gravel-covered alley. The county deed stated that it was built in 1873. I often wondered who lived there years ago when the new wood smelled fresh like the forest, the floors were sturdy and green beans canned from the summer garden were stored in the cellar.
The house stood on top of a small mound of earth with a cracked cement wall holding up the front yard and the side walkway. The house creaked and groaned in the wind and shook when you shut the front door. Shabby linoleum floors squeaked with each footstep. Eighty years of summer suns, thunderstorms and winter snows peeled and chipped the paint and wore out the wood. Our landlord, Mr. R. Lett, seldom came to make repairs.
The screen door that stayed in place all year kept out flies, wasps, mosquitoes and other creatures. We didn’t have money to change doors with the seasons; and, for all the years I lived there, I never had a key. Most of the time, we didn’t lock the front door until we went to bed. A tiny hook latch for the screen door kept it from flapping in the wind. In the summer, when friends came to visit, they just hollered through the screen door, “Miss Alice, you home?” In winter a knock on the glass pane announced a visitor. Regardless of the season, a parade of friends marched through the doors every day.
My eyes blink in stunned disbelief as Rosemary and I approach Number 25. I’ve come because of the nightmare. It haunted me, woke me in the night, shouted in my ears, the house—it’s being torn down. Go home. So I came home.
In the yard where our house used to be a bulldozer twists and turns. Its claws rip the house apart, tear its heart out and crush the doors and windows. It rolls over the kitchen, and smashes our alligator-skinned piano. The porch where I had my first kiss of summer has collapsed under a pile of whirring dust.
Images of forgotten memories border on the surreal. I want to run up the stairs, let the screen door bang shut, and see what Mom’s doing. Is she in the kitchen making hot water corncakes? Maybe she’s dancing in the piano room or ironing clothes by the front window.
In 1969, I bought the house from Mr. Lett for my mother. After my stepfather died in the early 70s, he left her with a small amount of insurance money. Mom had a new porch built, new siding put on, and repaired the concrete.
Mom was a good housekeeper. Our house was always spic-and-span clean. After her death, my brother rented out our childhood home and the new tenants sold drugs and left dirty dishes with rancid food everywhere. Roaches, ants and rats crawled through tiny cracks and holes to eat scraps left on tabletops, in the bathtub, and on the floor. Eventually, the city demanded that it be demolished. Mom never lived to know about the destruction of 25 West 7th Street.
“Rose, do you have a camera?” She reaches in her purse and pulls out an instant Kodak.
Snap. A brief click captures the death of a house. I don’t get out of the car. It’s too painful to stay any longer.
July 1996 -- The Dream
It’s been forty years since I lived in this small town in south-central Ohio. A wooden sign announces, “Welcome to Chillicothe, population 22,114.” New stores with different names inhabit the spaces of the old ones that I once knew. Nowadays folks don’t shop on Paint Street anymore; they go instead to Route 23, east of town, where Walmart, MacDonald’s, the Hampton Inn and other American brand names abound. Cheap and fast replaced quaint and nostalgic. The smell of the paper mill, greetings from voices with southern Ohio twangs and July’s smothering heat send my thoughts into tender remembrances of life in Chillicothe.
We lived at 25 West 7th Street in a rented two-story house that sat on the southwest corner of a gravel-covered alley. The county deed stated that it was built in 1873. I often wondered who lived there years ago when the new wood smelled fresh like the forest, the floors were sturdy and green beans canned from the summer garden were stored in the cellar.
The house stood on top of a small mound of earth with a cracked cement wall holding up the front yard and the side walkway. The house creaked and groaned in the wind and shook when you shut the front door. Shabby linoleum floors squeaked with each footstep. Eighty years of summer suns, thunderstorms and winter snows peeled and chipped the paint and wore out the wood. Our landlord, Mr. R. Lett, seldom came to make repairs.
The screen door that stayed in place all year kept out flies, wasps, mosquitoes and other creatures. We didn’t have money to change doors with the seasons; and, for all the years I lived there, I never had a key. Most of the time, we didn’t lock the front door until we went to bed. A tiny hook latch for the screen door kept it from flapping in the wind. In the summer, when friends came to visit, they just hollered through the screen door, “Miss Alice, you home?” In winter a knock on the glass pane announced a visitor. Regardless of the season, a parade of friends marched through the doors every day.
My eyes blink in stunned disbelief as Rosemary and I approach Number 25. I’ve come because of the nightmare. It haunted me, woke me in the night, shouted in my ears, the house—it’s being torn down. Go home. So I came home.
In the yard where our house used to be a bulldozer twists and turns. Its claws rip the house apart, tear its heart out and crush the doors and windows. It rolls over the kitchen, and smashes our alligator-skinned piano. The porch where I had my first kiss of summer has collapsed under a pile of whirring dust.
Images of forgotten memories border on the surreal. I want to run up the stairs, let the screen door bang shut, and see what Mom’s doing. Is she in the kitchen making hot water corncakes? Maybe she’s dancing in the piano room or ironing clothes by the front window.
In 1969, I bought the house from Mr. Lett for my mother. After my stepfather died in the early 70s, he left her with a small amount of insurance money. Mom had a new porch built, new siding put on, and repaired the concrete.
Mom was a good housekeeper. Our house was always spic-and-span clean. After her death, my brother rented out our childhood home and the new tenants sold drugs and left dirty dishes with rancid food everywhere. Roaches, ants and rats crawled through tiny cracks and holes to eat scraps left on tabletops, in the bathtub, and on the floor. Eventually, the city demanded that it be demolished. Mom never lived to know about the destruction of 25 West 7th Street.
“Rose, do you have a camera?” She reaches in her purse and pulls out an instant Kodak.
Snap. A brief click captures the death of a house. I don’t get out of the car. It’s too painful to stay any longer.
October 2006 -- Chillicothe
In a bridal shop on Paint Street, Rosemary and Ila sit talking. Too restless to stay seated with them, I walk around the modest shop carefully touching silk pastel suits and beaded dresses with edges of lace. Photographs of high school girls wearing orchids on their wrists and gowns bought at the shop clutter the counter. Boys in pale gray tuxedos with ruffled white shirts stand beside girls with salon-styled hairdos, light blue eye shadow and ruby red lips. Several of the pictures are of white girls with black guys. Things change, I say to myself as I look at their bright faces staring into the future. Unless their grandparents have told them, they know nothing about proms in the 1950s and early 60s.
“Anybody want to walk to 7th Street with me?”
Neither Rose nor Ila are interested in going to the old neighborhood and the lot where my house used to be, so I go alone. I need to retrace the path I took hundreds of times so many years ago. Two blocks of small shops give way to the historically designated grand homes from the 1800s on Paint Street. Signs inform passersby that they are now residential care homes and law offices. I walk by St. Mary’s Church and the place where the diner used to be. The small squat building was moved to a different location on 2nd Street in 2000.
New owners are quite proud of the history of their reincarnated diner. On the wall are black and white snapshots from the 1940s and 50s and an ad that says Drink Coca-Cola in Bottles —5¢. Behind the counter stands a young blond guy wearing a blue baseball cap and a dark blue apron. A friend told me to stop in and get a menu because it gives information about the diner, so I ask if he has one that I could have. He says no they don’t have any to give out but they’re coming in a week or two. I leave my name and address on a torn slip of paper. I ask him when the diner first opened. He hands me a menu covered in a plastic sheet stating that the diner first opened in 1940.
I want to tell him how much courage it took for me to walk into this place with its black and white checkered floor, red naugahyde stools, and gray Formica tables. I want to tell him how I have never forgotten my first steps into the diner as an eight-year-old, but instead, I quietly leave the restaurant and the elderly white customers who sit at the counter and tables.
Some of them must have gone to the diner in the 1950s when it was on Paint Street across the alley from St. Mary’s. Probably they never thought about us not being allowed to sit down and eat. It was the way things were. Maybe one of these old guys was there the day the string-bean waitress with straggly hair pressed under a hairnet told my Mom that coloreds couldn’t sit and eat in the blue-awning diner. What would they say if I told them what had happened? Would we have a conversation about Chillicothe life in the 1950s?
I continue toward 7th Street. The old post office is closed. The new one is a bland, one-storey brick building with windows stretching across the front. The Valentines and Carpenters used to sit on their front porches. Folks played pool in Eddie’s Nite Club before the new post office was built on 4th and Walnut. The former, used-to-be post office on Paint Street, commands attention. It looks official with its Greek columns and slate gray color. Now it’s rented out for partygoers to dance on its marble floors in rooms we never knew were there.
In the next block I approach the Chillicothe Public Library. As a young girl, the solitude and smell of books provided a respite for me. I often wandered among the shelves looking at titles, holding books, wishing I could work behind the counter. No colored girls worked there in the 1950s. Today, as I walk through the door, the first person I see is a young black girl checking out books for patrons. Things change.
Mr. and Mrs. Curran, an older white couple, had a store in their living room. The house is still there on the corner of 6th Street and the alley that leads to where my house used to be on Seventh Street. My brother Ralph and I loved to skip up the alley to their store to buy wax lips, button candy, and bottles of Orange Nehi. Many years ago, they closed their store and moved away. I wonder who lives there now.
Along the walls and fences that line the alley, I search for milkweed plants, but there are none to be found. We used to make our arrows from their stalks. We twisted the milkweed until it broke off and a white milky substance trickled down the sides of its hairy stalk making it sticky to the touch.
The house where Squenchy lived is gone. Her ghost stands in the yard eating a sugar sandwich. She looks up, eyes full of mischief. An impish grin reveals small, yellowed teeth. Squenchy’s ghost waves and hollers out, “Hey Margaret Ann. Whatcha doing here? Haven’t seen you in a while. Where you been?”
The only house remaining in the alley is the Browns’ shabby place covered in red shingles. The slightest of winds could lift it off its foundation and send it whirring like Dorothy’s house in The Wizard of Oz.
As I timidly roam through the weeds that have turned 25 West 7th into a tangled jungle, a longing to reach back to the past surrounds me. Pushing dirt aside with my feet, I look for objects from a lifetime ago. Maybe I can find fragments of my youth: a white porcelain poodle Mom bought at the second hand store; one of those purple aluminum tumblers; or even a broken piece of window pane from my bedroom. I find nothing, not even shards of linoleum from squeaky, crooked floors. Where’s the lilac bush? It must be here. I can smell its sweet fragrance from fifty years ago, but there’s no trace of it now. Finally, as I turn to go, I spy the tree my brother planted when he was a little boy. It stands tall, giving shade to a dilapidated fence that remains at the back end of the yard. Tears of memories swell but refuse to drop.
In a bridal shop on Paint Street, Rosemary and Ila sit talking. Too restless to stay seated with them, I walk around the modest shop carefully touching silk pastel suits and beaded dresses with edges of lace. Photographs of high school girls wearing orchids on their wrists and gowns bought at the shop clutter the counter. Boys in pale gray tuxedos with ruffled white shirts stand beside girls with salon-styled hairdos, light blue eye shadow and ruby red lips. Several of the pictures are of white girls with black guys. Things change, I say to myself as I look at their bright faces staring into the future. Unless their grandparents have told them, they know nothing about proms in the 1950s and early 60s.
“Anybody want to walk to 7th Street with me?”
Neither Rose nor Ila are interested in going to the old neighborhood and the lot where my house used to be, so I go alone. I need to retrace the path I took hundreds of times so many years ago. Two blocks of small shops give way to the historically designated grand homes from the 1800s on Paint Street. Signs inform passersby that they are now residential care homes and law offices. I walk by St. Mary’s Church and the place where the diner used to be. The small squat building was moved to a different location on 2nd Street in 2000.
New owners are quite proud of the history of their reincarnated diner. On the wall are black and white snapshots from the 1940s and 50s and an ad that says Drink Coca-Cola in Bottles —5¢. Behind the counter stands a young blond guy wearing a blue baseball cap and a dark blue apron. A friend told me to stop in and get a menu because it gives information about the diner, so I ask if he has one that I could have. He says no they don’t have any to give out but they’re coming in a week or two. I leave my name and address on a torn slip of paper. I ask him when the diner first opened. He hands me a menu covered in a plastic sheet stating that the diner first opened in 1940.
I want to tell him how much courage it took for me to walk into this place with its black and white checkered floor, red naugahyde stools, and gray Formica tables. I want to tell him how I have never forgotten my first steps into the diner as an eight-year-old, but instead, I quietly leave the restaurant and the elderly white customers who sit at the counter and tables.
Some of them must have gone to the diner in the 1950s when it was on Paint Street across the alley from St. Mary’s. Probably they never thought about us not being allowed to sit down and eat. It was the way things were. Maybe one of these old guys was there the day the string-bean waitress with straggly hair pressed under a hairnet told my Mom that coloreds couldn’t sit and eat in the blue-awning diner. What would they say if I told them what had happened? Would we have a conversation about Chillicothe life in the 1950s?
I continue toward 7th Street. The old post office is closed. The new one is a bland, one-storey brick building with windows stretching across the front. The Valentines and Carpenters used to sit on their front porches. Folks played pool in Eddie’s Nite Club before the new post office was built on 4th and Walnut. The former, used-to-be post office on Paint Street, commands attention. It looks official with its Greek columns and slate gray color. Now it’s rented out for partygoers to dance on its marble floors in rooms we never knew were there.
In the next block I approach the Chillicothe Public Library. As a young girl, the solitude and smell of books provided a respite for me. I often wandered among the shelves looking at titles, holding books, wishing I could work behind the counter. No colored girls worked there in the 1950s. Today, as I walk through the door, the first person I see is a young black girl checking out books for patrons. Things change.
Mr. and Mrs. Curran, an older white couple, had a store in their living room. The house is still there on the corner of 6th Street and the alley that leads to where my house used to be on Seventh Street. My brother Ralph and I loved to skip up the alley to their store to buy wax lips, button candy, and bottles of Orange Nehi. Many years ago, they closed their store and moved away. I wonder who lives there now.
Along the walls and fences that line the alley, I search for milkweed plants, but there are none to be found. We used to make our arrows from their stalks. We twisted the milkweed until it broke off and a white milky substance trickled down the sides of its hairy stalk making it sticky to the touch.
The house where Squenchy lived is gone. Her ghost stands in the yard eating a sugar sandwich. She looks up, eyes full of mischief. An impish grin reveals small, yellowed teeth. Squenchy’s ghost waves and hollers out, “Hey Margaret Ann. Whatcha doing here? Haven’t seen you in a while. Where you been?”
The only house remaining in the alley is the Browns’ shabby place covered in red shingles. The slightest of winds could lift it off its foundation and send it whirring like Dorothy’s house in The Wizard of Oz.
As I timidly roam through the weeds that have turned 25 West 7th into a tangled jungle, a longing to reach back to the past surrounds me. Pushing dirt aside with my feet, I look for objects from a lifetime ago. Maybe I can find fragments of my youth: a white porcelain poodle Mom bought at the second hand store; one of those purple aluminum tumblers; or even a broken piece of window pane from my bedroom. I find nothing, not even shards of linoleum from squeaky, crooked floors. Where’s the lilac bush? It must be here. I can smell its sweet fragrance from fifty years ago, but there’s no trace of it now. Finally, as I turn to go, I spy the tree my brother planted when he was a little boy. It stands tall, giving shade to a dilapidated fence that remains at the back end of the yard. Tears of memories swell but refuse to drop.