Home Productions: on Brentwood Road

​In conversation with my mother, Jennifer Perry, on one of my childhood homes.

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It had potential. 
 
It was a good space…….wasn’t it? 
I liked it; it would have been a good home for our family.

And I would’ve stayed; it just needed so much work. 

The fence, the yard; yes, some of it was cosmetic, but it would have been a lot of money. 

It was big. The living room was big. The bedrooms were a good size too.

I liked the idea of bedrooms upstairs. You see, when you get old and ‘shakey,’ you can start using the extra beds downstairs. 
 

And there was a little apartment next door too. Remember the neighbors? I use to talk to the mother from time to time. She had a son, he was about Franny’s age. They moved further east. She said it was cheaper. 
 
Back in England, my childhood home had plaster details around the light fixtures. What are they called again? Ah, yes…Medallions, that’s what I remember.

I liked the older houses better than the contemporary ones. Do you remember the drawers in the upstairs bedrooms? They were recessed in the wall.

Older houses have niches, wainscoting, thick wood banisters…things like that; inset shelves, fireplaces…they have character… 
 
If you get an old home, fix it up if you can. Restore it. 
 
Know what I’m saying? 
 
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Oh! Do you remember when we found the treasures upstairs? 
 
Okay, so, there were two rooms upstairs, right? 
One on the left side of the house. Another on the right.

The stairs took you right up between them, and in the middle, there was a closet.

The first day we moved in, we found brand-new stuff there! — there were down comforters — and those are expensive…a few hundreds dollars. 
There were pillows, underwear, toys…” 
 
We told the owner, just to be honest, that someone left home goods behind, assuming by the last tenant. “Take it!, he said.” 
 
(The last tenants weren’t coming back for them. I don’t know why they would leave so much behind…they probably didn’t have enough room. Maybe they didn’t 
need them anymore. I remember I found two action figures that ventured deep into the acute corner, where the floor and roof pitch met. Covered in cobwebs, I reached in, grabbing each by my fingertips with hesitation, fearing I’d meet their maker. They were in good shape, though I have no idea who their design iconized. They had synthetic hair ponytails; I’m assuming to humanize them, though I found it unsettling, and soon tucked them back into the closet where I found them.) 
 
The underwear went down to Jamaica. Lou took the comforter. I didn’t take anything. 
We started to keep things in there once it was all cleared out. There was a bookshelf. I don’t know if it was ours. 
 
…no, it was ours. 
 
(There was a TV in my parents room at our last apartment. Between their closet and the bedroom door sat a bookshelf, the TV was on top. I would sit on the floor watching channel 5 until the last cartoon of the day.) 

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Oh, the organ. 
 
Do you remember the Penny Saver? That little magazine?

Someone was selling an organ in Brightwaters, an old lady. You know, your father played really wall. I don’t even know how we got it into the house… I don’t even know what car we used to get it. 
 

We were preparing to move to Tillie. I was like, “this is heavy!” Franny didn’t want it, so it came time to give it up. Lou said she could take it down to Georgia for Alexandria, so she took it. 
 
I have no idea where it is now… 
 
Someone the other day was selling one. Actually, there were two people. One was someone I knew from Jamaica, he’s in Florida now. 
 
…When did we get that organ? …We must have gotten it while we were living on Brook Ave. 
 

Where did we keep it? …It must have been in my room. 
That’s a good question. It MUST have been in my room. 
 
I don’t remember! (Singing) 
We should find it, we should know where it is. 
 
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The silk leaf flowers. 

At the time, it was the ‘in’ thing. 
Every era has it’s ‘thing.’ 
 
I passed by the house the other day. I don’t know if the current owner is renting it or if they purchased. They took all the fences down…it feels so different. 
 
…I wonder if we left anything behind. 
 

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End