517 Hillcrest Drive

This is an entry I posted on my "real" blog in February of 2011, after one last trip with my brothers to empty out the house. I thought about it today--November 15-- because it would've been my dad's 92nd birthday if he were still here. The house we lived in on Hillcrest Drive in Spring Valley is the home I remember best.

 

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Mike, Margot, and I were in Spring Valley yesterday to pick up the last of what we wanted to keep from Mom and Dad's house. The house is empty of furniture, the walls are bare, all that remains are a few cleaning supplies and a couple of waste baskets with the last few items to throw away. A few hours of work by Spring Valley's version of the Merry Maids, and it will be ready to go on the real estate market on February 15, as scheduled. I only lived there during my junior and senior high school years and the summers on either end, but my parents lived there for much longer. It was my mom's home for nearly 40 years, and my dad's for 50. And of course, it was the place my three siblings and I called home.

Mom was a homemaker and Dad taught and coached in Spring Valley when they decided to build a new house. A teacher's salary didn't offer a luxurious lifestyle like it does now (ha ha!), so Dad's summer work in the 1950's and 60's was being a carpenter, a skill he learned alongside his brother (my Uncle Art) and their father (Grandpa Fred Reps). Dad and some of his teacher friends did much of the work on the house, from basement to roof, and Mom and Dad did most of the finishing work inside. Mike pointed out yesterday that Mom often said how proud she was that she and Dad had designed the layout of the house, which is probably why we had that great laundry chute to mess around with! I think Mike got stuck  in it once...

Our family of five moved to our brand new split-level in the summer of 1960. The house seemed huge to us, and it probably was by 1960 small-town Minnesota standards. We had two bathrooms and a family room, which was a big deal back then. Mary Jo and I shared the largest of the three bedrooms. Our room was painted pale yellow and adorned with floral bedspreads. The closet had two big storage drawers, and a laundry chute that we loved, except when Mark threw his dirty clothes into our closet without opening the chute.

Mark's single-person, small bedroom suddenly needed to become a room for two when we found out about Mike's impending birth in April of 1961. Mom and Dad kept baby Mike in a crib in their room for a while, and then Mike and Mark became roomies.  Their bedroom had a closet that was extra deep on one side for storage leading up to the attic. Whenever I went into their room at night or when Mom and Dad were gone, I made sure the closet door was closed so attic creatures wouldn't descend into the rest of the house. And I was 13. What a wimp!

I remember the first night we slept in the house. Friends of my parents had spent the hot and humid late summer day driving back and forth between old and new, loading and unloading furniture and boxes, emptying 608 North Huron Avenue, and filling 517 Hillcrest Drive. That first night was hot (no air conditioning) and, while our beds were assembled and in their respective bedrooms, everything else was in boxes stacked around us, waiting to be put away tomorrow. The house smelled new and wonderful. I drifted off to sleep feeling happy that we'd moved, but a bit out of place in the unfamiliar surroundings. There was work to be done yet to make the house completely livable--carpeting and furniture for the living room and sealing some of the hardwood floors were at the top of the list. But it was a big adventure to be in our brand new home and we kids didn't mind the minor chaos as much as Mom did.

For 50 years, everyone from Grandma Kirsch, Grandpa and Grandma Reps, Big Uncle Mike, other aunts and uncles, and the few cousins we had came and went. Larry/Dad and I got married and we brought our babies, who became adults in the blink of an eye, and soon they brought their significant others. Eventually, they got married and brought their own babies. We came and went for birthdays, anniversaries, Christmases, weddings, funerals, and most often just to visit.  It's been too quiet in that house since September. Soon a new family will move in, and people will come and go once again, and call this house their home.