The house on Market St.

It was the summer of 1966, I was sixteen, just getting ready to start my senior year in high school, when my parents moved. They moved away from the state capital where education was expected, people were more or less ruled by rules and life was easier for a shy bookworm; to a big house on the corner of a small town where good ole boys ruled the streets and it was more common to shoot someone's dog than complain about it.

The house was big and sturdy in every way. Enclosed oak staircases ran from the main floor to the second, turned a corner and ran to the third, where my brothers slept. My sister and I shared rooms linked by a large pocket door, an outside vestibule that led down to the wrap around front porch and the big upstairs hallway. Once upon a time a doctor had his office and waiting room in our rooms.

The house had creaks and groans like all old houses, only these were more commonly sequential. Like step by step coming upstairs, or across the room. Our dog would sit and growl at the television, or if we moved it,  at that same corner of the living room. The basement was fine except for one small room. My dad, a chemistry teacher among other things, stored his chemicals in there, relatively sure no one would linger too long looking for things they shouldn't play with.

The third floor bathroom could not be repaired. Or rather, it could be repaired, but it never lasted more than a few weeks before some part of it broke down again. When my father went out the window to repair the leaking roof outside that bathroom, he leaned out with me holding his feet. Suddenly I lost my balance and he whizzed out that window faster than a paper airplane, barely stopping before he took a thirty some foot tumble down to the yard.

After my sister and I were married we both came home to visit at the same time and my mother put us up on the third floor. My sister refused to close her eyes unless the lights stayed on. I was more realistic, what could be there? Our mother came up to say goodnight. We heard each footstep as she plodded all the way to our closed door. We both thought we saw the door knob move, but mom didn't come in. After calling out to her a few times, thinking she was being silly, we panicked and screamed for her.

She came! Dashing up the stairs in one pounding flurry and straight into the room. 

For the first time.

When we sold the house, the new owners decided to remodel it, but the house objected.

It burned down the new parts three times.