IOIIT Chapter 2: The Home
Once married, they purchased a large ranch-style home together in Bristol, where Regina was already living. Since I can remember, Dad has always preferred living on a substantial piece of land where neighbors are few and far between. Regina was very keen on living the so-called “country life” in a small town, so it was no surprise they chose to set up housekeeping in a rural area.
Situated across the street from the only elementary school in town, their lovely ranch-style home featured a guest house and gazebo. A playhouse, swing set, trampoline, and the above-ground pool dotted the sprawling backyard. These accouterments made for no shortage of outdoor ventures during visits.
The interior of the house had an air of grandparents and traditional Sunday dinners. The swirling bright white carpet and chair rail in the great room gave it a rich vibe. The house was large in square footage but only had two traditional bedrooms. Near the kitchen was an odd room with industrial carpeting that had previously been a garage and now housed a closet with a washer and dryer. The two boys, Gunner and Jack, occupied the garage room.
The converted garage room had a strange feature I had never seen before. The attic ingress was in the room, but the laundry closet wall went straight up to the middle of the attic door. Looking upon it for the first time made me think, “Who would do such a thing?” and “I guess the attic is for not.” However, I was wrong. There was a way to access the attic, but it was unlike anything I had ever heard of. To access it, one had to open the laundry closet doors, climb on top of the washing machine, and rap on the laundry room wall until it loosened and eventually opened. The top half of the left wall of the laundry closet opened like a secret door, revealing the attic access.
The kitchen was small, with a green and white linoleum floor, yellow cabinets, and white Formica countertops. It was a typical 1970s kitchen. On the other side of the kitchen was a breakfast room with orange shag carpet, a great room, a formal dining room, and a formal living room. The kitchen also had a window above the sink that looked into the breakfast room, which became a pass-through window when setting the table for meals. The traditional dining and living rooms had rose-colored Berber carpeting and folding track doors typically found on closets. The large formal living room became Crystal’s room which Juliet and I shared with her during our weekend visits. Eventually, Dad dismantled the folding doors and built a door frame with a standard bedroom door.
Once Dad and Regina merged their belongings and set up their household, I quickly realized she had an extreme disdain for air conditioning. I use the word “extreme” because it really was extreme. She forbade the use of any type of air conditioning indoors and even sold the whole air conditioning unit that came with the house. This was genuinely nonsensical, in my opinion, as a life-long Floridian, knowing summers are obscenely humid, oppressive, and seemingly ceaseless.
In Florida, it usually begins to get unbearably sweltering and humid in June and stays that way until October. It’s downright miserable to be candid. Needless to say, spending time at Dad and Regina’s during summer was dreadful. We all loafed around in a persistent state of dampness in every sense of the word. Everyone was perpetually sweating, and the moist air hung like an invisible fog. When we bathed, it almost seemed futile because we’d be a sweaty mess within half an hour. We spent a great deal of time in the above-ground pool as a respite from the heat. Being only three feet deep, the water temperature felt like bathwater more often than not. The boys rarely donned shirts, and Crystal even took to wearing only a pair of panties while at home. She wouldn’t put anything else on unless she had to go outdoors.
Sleeping under these conditions was a challenge. Most of us only covered up with a flat sheet, if anything at all. The windows stayed open to let the hot, sticky air in, and each room routinely had a ceiling fan and at least two oscillating floor fans, all running simultaneously. These efforts were almost in vain, as all they did was blow around the steamy air.
Juliet and I lived with air conditioning at my mother’s place, which made for a rude awakening when we went to Dad’s. We groused about the heat and were met with a hearty lecture from Regina about how sensational it is to breathe fresh air and listen to the birds chirping in the morning. She also intimated that people who use air conditioning are spoiled and lazy. I thought to myself, “then most of the people we all know must be spoiled and lazy.”
The air conditioning embargo eventually became a complication when hosting houseguests, prompting Dad to install a window air conditioning unit in the guest bedroom. When Regina’s mother visited from the Tampa Bay area, she usually drove her motor home because it had an air conditioning unit. Ultimately, Juliet and I were moved to the guest room, leaving Crystal with her own room. After Dad put the window air conditioning unit in, he told us we could use it when we visited and showed us how to do so. That first time we turned it on, it felt like a whole new world. Juliet and I lay there in bed, letting the cool air permeate the room, growing more comfortable with every second that went by. Sleep took us under shortly thereafter. The bliss was short-lived as Regina barged into our room less than an hour later, turned off the air conditioning unit, and told us to never turn it on again.
Living in a home with open windows and sweltering humidity propagated an unplanned (hopefully) pest problem. Cockroaches were a monumental issue because heat and moisture make up their preferred environment. Ergo, you couldn’t go a night without seeing (or sometimes feeling) three to five cockroaches, which made me wonder what we weren’t seeing. It was utterly repugnant, and cockroaches weren’t the only problem. I saw beetles, palmettos, spiders, and even a snake or two. It was like the Wild Kingdom in that house. Every night I was there when it was hot, I worried a bug would crawl into my ear while I slept. Any complaints about the persistent vermin problem were met with “Sarah, you go camping. How can silly old bugs bother you?” “But I don’t want to camp in my normal, everyday life,” I thought, but kept it to myself.