Oh, how I loved that old house. White. Victorian. Two story with a wrap-around porch. Mama grew up in that house and when I was five I was sure I would too. It was 1947. The war had ended, the local soldiers had come home and all things seemed new and possible in my small West Texas town where a noon time whistle at the fire station sounded loud and was heard all over town.

The downtown square boasted a courthouse, WPA style, two picture shows, two drug stores with soda fountains and two department stores where Daddy bought his work shirts and Mama bought her nightgowns and best of all, in the springtime they sold little girl white sandals that fit me just right.

The town was friendly. “Howdy. How y'all doin’?” “My goodness, how you have growed.” “Nice seein’ you.”

Our house was friendly too and had its own voice. It was so old that it had a lot to say. In wintertime, its big fireplace, logs crackling with slow burning fire, urged me, “Come on in and get yourself warm.” “You can dry those wool mittens right here on my hearth.”

In the summertime, white wooden rocking chairs scattered across the big porch urged me to sit in the shade and catch a breeze “before you have a heat stroke.” And almost every day around 5:30 in the late afternoon, the big white kitchen echoed with Mama’s voice. “Supper’s ready. Y'all come on in.”

My bedroom was a screened-in sleeping porch and it was just the right size for twin beds, a bookcase and Raggedy Ann. Its windows took hold of a summer breeze, when there was one, and worked hard to keep the mosquitoes outside where they belonged. I flat hated mosquitoes and late at night when I thought no one, not even Daddy, was listening, I had earnest talks with God about why he had bothered to create mosquitoes and would he please keep them away from my face in the middle of hot summer nights when it was hard enough to sleep.

When the tired old wooden floors creaked or the brass weather stripping whined its complaints about the north wind, Mama said, “This old house has seen a lot of years.” In case she was worried about it, I told her that none of those spooky sounds scared me one bit. But the nighttime buzzing of mosquitoes .. Well, that was another matter!

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