To call it a shack is too dismissive,
A cottage, too pretentious.
It was - a house, nothing more.
Four rooms.
The white rocker my grandfather made
Sat by the coal oil stove
In the tiny living room
Where the front door was seldom locked.
On Friday nights, sweating men in black and white
Fought on the TV screen
While my father smoked L & M's
And shouted encouragement.
Occasionally in his excitement
He would forget to thump,
And hot ashes would fly everywhere.

The kitchen always smelled of bacon.
Oil stained the wall behind the stove,
The red rooster and rolling pin paper
Cooked crispy brown.
But the sun was always there.

The house was the color and texture
Of double-aught sandpaper,
Red-brown and rough.
Black lines stamped
Vertically and horizontally
To give the appearance
Of brick and mortar.
No one was fooled. High hedge - the switchmaking kind -
Offered poor protection from waves
Of dust which rolled up from the gravel road,
Powdering my skin
Like my mother's talc.
Lazy cats lolled beneath the porch
And under persimmon trees where I jumped rope,
Slipping occasionally on the green fruit,
Staining my clothes.

Just beyond the hedge and across the driveway
Sprawled two cherry trees,
Low-limbed and perfect for a child's climb.
Once when a crop duster landed his plane on our road,
I watched from between the branches as the crowd gathered.

Discreetly placed among some bushes behind the house
Sat the privy I kept
Secret from my friends for so long.

Then, a new house, built near the old.
Split-level, buff-brick (real ones),
Air conditioning, running water,
Coal oil stove exchanged for an
All-electric home featured
In the rural cooperative newspaper.

On moving day I loaded my CoCola crate wagon
And followed my mother around the vacant barn,
Past the garden, down the path worn by carpenters' feet.
We stopped at the gully
Where she threw old things she no longer wanted.
Later that day, my brother and I scrambled
Through the clutter, seizing discarded, familiar treasures
And sneaking them back into our belongings.

The cats stayed with us for a while,
Then they left,
Returning to the shade
Of persimmon trees and porch.
Perhaps it was too clean for them.
I would go to the edge of the grassless yard
And stare down the path, looking for some sign of them.
But they were gone.

We kept the old place for a while,
But my father said it was more trouble
Than it was worth.
A fishing buddy with a bulldozer pushed it down
And filled in the cistern.

When I was grown, my father gave me the land.
Years later, I sold it.
But when I return to Route 2 and park my car
In front of the buff-brick house,
I always look down the path first.

I'm not sure why.
It was just a house.

 
 

Kathryn Rose is an eleventh grade high school English teacher who took about twenty years before she finally decided to sit down and seriously attempt to write something of substance. A native of Forrest City, Arkansas, Rose grew up riding the back roads and field roads of the Delta, a region dotted with houses identical to the one in her poem. Route 2, Box 237 is the product of a creative writing class assignment at a local community college.

“The instructor was always after us to write about what we knew—rural life. I snidely referred to this as ‘hound dog poetry.’ You know, a couple of good old boys sitting on the porch in overalls with a hound dog between them. I didn’t get a masters degree so I could write this. I actually began the poem with that attitude: “It was just a house.” Why make more out of it than it really was? But fortunately, the poem took on a life of its own and saved itself from me. I was pleased with the finished product. We are a new generation of Southerners, no longer living on the land our grandfathers and great-grandfathers owned. I hope this poem says something to everyone who ever had to leave a place behind. I hope it reminds us that we take something of that place with us, wherever we go.”

Currently, Rose is chairman of the English Department at Tullahoma High School in Tullahoma, Tennessee. A wife and mother of two daughters, she presently has a novel under consideration by an e-publisher and is working on a collection of short fiction.

Have comments you'd like to send the author? Please e-mail Kathryn at: mgkyrose@ficom.net or fill out the form below: