012 - A New House Far Away From Friends (2 - Coming and Going)

The Last Apricot Tree Under the Mountain

Where we were once surrounded by other kids when we’d lived in town, we were now isolated when we moved to a house nestled among the apricot trees. Our siblings became our playmates and our games revolved around the orchards and fields. No more laps around the neighborhood on our bicycles or forming gangs to dig forts at new subdivision home sites. As there were no other kids' houses to visit, the buildings on the property and the irrigation pipes and canals became the center and boundaries of our attention.

There were two living quarters, painted dark kelly green, built in the 1950s. The first was a small cottage for the original occupants to live in while they built the ‘big’ house, though the definition of big house has changed dramatically since those days. Using lumber from the old Army barracks in Pittsburg’s Camp Stoneman, the Simms, who’d sold us the property, had built their dream home.

In 1972, my mother and father, their five children and one dachshund that thought he was a wolf, moved into the big house. The cottage was designated for storage and accommodations for generations of wall rats fighting for living space with an infinity of field mice for roommates. It wasn’t long before two claustrophobic older brothers would turn it into the best fort they had ever made, as long as a person didn’t mind the scampering and chewing noises as lullabies.

The big house had a small kitchen, a large living/dining room and three successively smaller bedrooms. The bigger bathroom down by all of the bedrooms was for Mom and the youngest, my sister - the ‘pink’ bathroom. The small bathroom all the way down by the kitchen that barely had enough room for a sink, toilet and shower, was shared by the boys - the ‘blue’ bathroom. We shared towels, too. I can only say that you never wanted to be last in the morning.

The walls and ceilings were a stained knotty pine, beautiful, but dark. The house had a fireplace which we actually needed, because there was no insulation in the walls or ceiling and the only other heat source were two electric wall heaters. You could find us huddled there on top of each other every morning. There was a lovely long porch in the front and a rustic brick barbeque and matching wishing well out in the back.

The four boys shared the biggest bedroom, but don’t let the word ‘biggest’ fool you. We filled most of the room with a fantastical four level bunk bed. The ceilings were low, like all of the houses then, so the top bunk was impossibly close to knotty pine, with more space for the two lower bunks. We got to four bunks because the last bed rolled out from under the bunk lowest to the ground.

If positioned correctly, you could roll off of the top bunk and bounce off the roll out bed to try and stick a landing or crack your nose. As a child, I believed this arrangement was designed specifically for shenanigans of every kind: from low-level chatting well past bedtime to impromptu monkey bars or kicking the mattress right above you. You wanted the bottom or the roll out so you couldn’t get kicked. If everything worked out, the kickee would lose their temper and a parent would come to reprimand the victim, not the perpetrator. It was a great training ground for my ‘Who, me?’ face.

Sister got her own room, and my parents shared the smallest room in the far corner at the end. This was a bit of a bummer for our budding band of rule benders because it was perfectly suited to sneaking out of the window and back in without detection. The bunk room had no escape routes. The close quarters and lack of privacy would be remedied soon enough.

In the meantime and almost immediately, my dad started making plans for an expansion. After all, we still had a brother and sister to join us in the dark green fortress that binds us together even today. Our Saturdays and weeknights for years would be a never ending cycle of kitchen add-ons, porch enclosures, surplus concrete calls, carports, and shop construction.

But that was all in the future. For now, we had moved to the country where all we had were each other and the beauty we would grow to appreciate and even depend on.

Editorial and Advance Reader Contributors: Mark Wallace, Alisha Price, Heather Bergevin of Barrow Editing, Mette Ivie, Bonnie Wach, Francoise Boden, Mark Berg, Mike Hammer and Kathy Toelkes. Special thanks to Bill Davis for a kick in the pants that only a friend from your old stomping grounds can give you. Mt. Diablo and Apricot Tree painting by the talented and local artist, Greg Hart.