I have created an actual map of the area around my childhood home, and for today’s #MemoirFest prompt, I want you to create a map for the area around your childhood home, too. You can scribble it on paper, but I primarily want you to walk around that area with your words. I want you to tell me, space-by-space what was around the house where you lived as a child..

As I was drawing my map on Photoshop, I was reminded of how very much of my life has been determined by the fact that I grew up in a tiny community, where I rarely moved outside of any area farther than 2 blocks away from my house.

Map of the Area Surrounding Jacki Kellum’s Childhood Home

My actual house was situated on a gravel road that was a block behind my grandmother’s house, and my grandmother’s house was situated on Main Street, which was a blacktop road–one of the few paved roads in my little town. at that time. My high school was across the street from my grandmother’s house, and my elementary school was behind my high school and a bit to the right of it. I always walked to school, and sometimes, I walked to my church, too, which was about 2 blocks away–but in the other direction. The farmlands were within eyesight of my house, in two directions.

My grandmother was an avid gardener, and  I walked to my grandmother’s house at least once every day, and when I did that, I would pass through the alley behind her yard first. That is where she grew fields of old-fashioned hollyhocks. As soon as I reached the field of hollyhocks, I knew that I had reached the safeness that I felt in my grandmother’s yard.

Several feet and many flowers beyond the hollyhocks, I would soon arrive at the back steps of my grandmother’s house. In 2015, I captured that feeling in a short poem.

Calico Cotton
by Jacki Kellum

I’ve reached the shore
Of my grandmother’s door–
The one from the garden, inside.

Oh, sunny, sweet back room
Of my grandmother’s loom–

The place in the dirt
Of my grandmother’s skirt.

In your soft, summer lap,
Hold me tight, I will nap,

On my grandmother’s porch,
Let me hide.
©Jacki Kellum October 9, 2015

I often say that in creating my own cottage garden now, 70 years after I walked through my grandmother’s garden daily, I am trying to grow my grandmother back into my life. And on many levels, that is true.

 

Growing My Way Back Home – September 1, 2001 – Jacki Kellum Garden Journal Entry

Allow me to zoom in on the area around my house even more, and I will show you how the stories of my life have evolved from the tiny snippet of the world that surrounded my house, which is a white house that is marked with an X on the map.

The house that is colored blue and which is to the side of my house is where my French teacher lived. Like all the other teachers in my school, my French teacher and his wife had been imported from somewhere else; I feel sure that Mr. Gray was not from France, but until I moved away to college, he was the only person that I knew who could speak with a French accent, or I guess it was French. He certainly didn’t sound the way that the other of us sounded in the Bootheel of Southeast Missouri. Mr. Gray and his wife must have moved to Gideon from some exotic place, and they brought with them the tradition of adding Christmas lights that were all one color outside at Christmas time. Before I saw their lights, I had only seen multi-colored lights outside. I was born in 1950, and the people where I lived liked Christmas lights, but they only used multicolored strands, both inside and out. In my picture book manuscript for My Window Seat, I write about the magic of those blue lights, especially when they were reflected in the snow. Here is how that picture book begins:

My Window Seat
by Jacki Kellum

I have a special window spot.
It’s right beside my bed—
With velvet cushions for a seat,
And curtains overhead.

I love to watch the Moon and Stars;
I sit here late at night.
I love to watch the silent Snow,
That paints my window white.
___________________________________________________

The people on the other side of my house, [in the house that is colored pink], raised chickens, and each morning, their Rooster would help me start my day. I wrote and illustrated a picture about that Rooster:

“The Sun needs to rise, but the Rooster’s in bed.” –
from Jacki Kellum’s Picture Book Waking Up the Sun

“The Cow Must be Milked.”
from Jacki Kellum’s Picture Book Waking Up the Sun

“The Chicks Must be Fed.”
from Jacki Kellum’s Picture Book Waking Up the Sun

My dad had a pet crow, who he taught to talk, and the crow loved to tease the little girl in the house that is colored pink. The little girl would often sit outside and make mud pies with her shiny, little aluminum pots and pans, and the crow, whose name was Sam, would swoop down and pick up the little girl’s cookware and fly several feet away before he would drop the pieces again. The little girl would squeal, “Stop it, Sam.” It should be of no surprise that the crow’s favorite words became: “Stop it, Sam, Stop it, Sam, Stop it, Sam,” and when he darted through the air, screeching those words, it seemed to me that all the fields around my house would rejoice. I have written a manuscript for s story about that crow, and I named it: Stop It, Sam.

I’ve also painted Sam,

The Raven – Jacki Kellum Watercolor Painting

As I harvest my own past, I reap blessings in many ways.

A small vacant shotgun house was next to the pink house, A shotgun house is a long, skinny house that is a series of single rooms, stacked end-on-end. When you walk through the front door of a shotgun house, you can see straight through it to the back door. But there were usually no more than 3 rooms to a shotgun house–A living room, a bedroom, and a kitchen. The bathroom was out back.

I spent many special moments in that old, vacant house. The walls of that house were rough wood, and in a few spots, wallpaper was tearing itself away from the walls. The wallpaper was thick and pulpy, and it had a smell that wallpapers no longer have. The smell was a mixture of sweetness and antiquity. In fact, the entire house had that nique smell. I have often said that I wish that I could bottle and sell “Old House Smell.: That smell would trigger many memories for me.

I loved to imagine that the old, vacant house was my house, and I would take a picnic lunch down there and I’d pretend that I was eating in my own kitchen. My picnics normally consisted of soft butter spread on Wonder bread, but on very special occasions, I would add some Hershey’s Cocoa power to the mix, too. I would pour some white sugar into a bowl, and I would mix some cocoa powder with the sugar. Sometimes, I would eat that concoction straight from the spoon, but sometimes, I would sprinkle it on buttered bread and make sandwiches. Then, off to my little vacant house, I would go.

Next to the vacant house, there was an empty lot or two. That is where I would sit and make clover chains, and where I’d occasionally chomp on a few wild onions. I can still smell the freshly mown grass in that lot. During the summer, the boys played baseball on that empty lot. When I was a child, the little girls didn’t play baseball where I lived. But I wasn’t athletic, and that was not a loss for me.

I grew up in a tiny town, where I knew almost everyone. But I didn’t know the lady who lived in the orange house that was across the street from mine. I didn’t even know that lady’s name. No one seemed to know that lady. They only referred to her in hushed voices, but when I was about 3, I watched her, as she nearly chop off her leg with a sickle when she was outside “mowing” her yard. The blood gushed from her leg, and I was terrified. Shortly, a car whisked her away, and a few weeks later, another car came and took her away again. I heard a few whispers that she had been taken to Farmington, which was a mental institution that was several hours away. I didn’t know much about mental institutions when I was3, but I had gathered that Farmington was a place to be dreaded, and in my little mind, the foreboding thought of an insane asylum became connected to the blood that gushed from the sickle’s errant swipe, and that incident scarred me for life.

One of my friends lived in the house that I’ve marked with yellow. She lived with her grandmother. An enormous sycamore tree grew in that yard, and every morning, the grandmother would take a household broom, and she would sweep the grassless earth beneath that tree. Even when I was a child, I thought that it was odd that anyone would sweep the earth, but I’ll have to admit that in doing so, she prepared a perfect spot for my friend and I to throw down a homemade quilt, where we could sit in the shade and play with our dolls until dark.

Another of my friends lived in the house that I have colored in purple. Because that family didn’t grow a garden and because they didn’t have a backyard fence, I always cut through that friend’s yard when I would walk to my grandma’s house. But one day, I saw that friend’s mother chop off a chicken’s head and boil it in a black cauldron that sat on top of stones that were circled to make a fire ring in their backyard. Again, that event frightened me, too, and for a while, I considered looking for a less treacherous path to my grandmother’s house. But in every other way, I had found the perfect route from my house to my grandmother’s house, and my grandmother’s house was my second home.

But rest assured that as soon as I got close to that purple house, I began sniffing for a wood fire, and I began listening for the screeches of a chicken in peril. Even when I had determined that the coast was clear, I tiptoed the rest of the way home.