Ash Street

The house on Ash was nice. It was down the street from my brother's ex-wife and his son and had the oldest tree in Christian county in the front yard. It was a small wood frame house with two bedrooms connected by a long skinny closet. There was a living room, separate dining room, eat in kitchen and a laundry room off the kitchen. The bathroom was off my bedroom. There was a front porch, a small side porch, and a glassed in porch that could only be accessed from the outside. It even had a basement where I stored many things I wasn't using. That turned out to be a mistake as the basement wasn't as dry as it looked.

One of my favorite things about this house was the small high window at the end of the long closet. My sister had given me a stained glass frame that fit perfectly in this window giving the closet a wonderful rich look. I put the king size bed in my room and the queen in the guest room along with my computer. I bought a 1940's cherry chest with a hidden make up drawer for my clothes and a small table for the kitchen. Everything else I had fit in perfectly here. I even put hanging plants along one side of the dining room.

My neighbor offered to mow my grass when he mowed his for ten dollars and who could beat that. I put my bike in the garage, but not my car because I couldn't put a garage door opener on it. It opened the wrong way. 

Becky and her new Guatemalan boyfriend came for dinner here one time. Bobby and Barbie came  just before Barbie's thirtieth birthday. They brought their new puppy, Eben the second, a beautifully trained Australian cattle dog. Bobby was in the kitchen telling me about the surprise proposal party he was planning for Barbie's birthday when there was a horrific explosion! We heard Barbie scream and ran in to see what happened. She was getting up off the floor! 

Lightning had struck the tree across the street, knocking branches off of a it before jumping to my house, hitting my tree and my electrical wires. No one was hurt, but it destroyed both my computer and my phone.

This was a cute house in a quiet neighborhood in a small town, but one night as I was watching television, a man came rushing into my living room. He didn't knock or anything. Then he stopped dead and stared at me like I was trespassing. Imagine my shock, and his surprise, when he discovered his friend no longer lived there. Still I felt very safe there except for the occasional feeling that I was not alone. That didn't bother me enough to want to move.

For a while I made dinner every night and my sister would come eat with me. We went on long walks at Rock Springs Conservation area near Decatur. We loved to look for deer and one time when we got lost we saw a big white owl high up in a tree looking down on us. We also loved to just sit in their bird room. They had microphones so you could listen to the birds as you watched them eat at the feeders. I thought how lovely it would be to live out in the country and be able to experience these things all the time.

The seed was planted and the search began. I really didn't expect to find a house in my price range like that, but I talked about it with everyone I knew. Finally, my brother's wife said her sister's husband had an old family home out in the country and it was available if I wanted it.

It was time to move!