When I say this house was beautiful that is no exaggeration. We walked up long winding stairs on the side of this hill which lead us around to the front door. The door was a heavy, dark masculine wood. All around the front porch was rich vegetation, just what you would expect to see in Florida.
All of us children were still a combination of awe and waiting for the rug to be ripped out from under us any second. Our dad opened the front door and it was clear our mom was completely in love with not only the house, but all of a sudden our dad was the best husband in the world. She was absolutely giddy.
"Oh, Mike," she squealed, "this is like a dream come true! A complete dream!!"
She then leaned into him and kissed him, long and hard. The four of us kids stood there with disgusted looks on our faces. I wanted to go back to the crappy Holiday Inn and swim with the new friends we met. These friends were really on vacation and they thought we were the greatest things since we told them we LIVED at the Holiday Inn. I liked that. We were so cool to be residents of the hotel rather than just mere vacationers.
"Kids, you won't believe this, but up those stairs right there we have our very own pool!!" Dad shouted as he pointed with his head to some white stucco stairs in the family room.
Wait a minute, wait a damn minute. We will have our own pool?? Okay, now I wanted to drink some of the kool-aid our mom was drinking!
"You all won't believe this room," our mom said to us as she hustled after us. "This room is a 'conversation pit'."
We turned left out of the main foyer of the home and followed our parents down a short hallway. All of the walls in the house were made of a stucco material and our footsteps echoed as we walked. We rounded the corner and the room before us was truly amazing!
The room was completely all white shag carpeting and the couches were built into the room....the couches WERE the room. You walked down three shag carpeted steps and sat on the circular couch. In the middle of the couch was an eight foot diameter fireplace which was made of brick. Hanging up above that was a black massive cone-shaped fireplace chimney which lead out of the ceiling.
I guess the idea was you sit around this fireplace and have conversations; the conversaton pit. I can remember after we settled into the house and into our new school we had many slumber parties in this room. It was truly a great house for parties.
After viewing the conversation pit we noticed some black metal circular stairs that led up to a hole in the ceiling.
We all followed our parents up these stairs and we were told by our dad, "this is our side of the house. This is the master suite! The upstairs of the other side of the house is your side!"
And what a suite it was. They had a 1,000 square foot main bedroom. They also had a fireplace in their room. The fireplace was situated up against a wall so it could also be the fireplace for the master bathroom. The shower in their bathroom was large enough to hold twenty people, or so our dad told us.
I looked at it and imagined twenty people in it nude showering and I felt sick to my stomach. They had a wall of windows that looked out onto the pool area. They were also the mirrored windows, so from the outside you could only see your own reflection.
This was our first chance to see the pool and a second after seeing it we had already mentally checked out of the Holiday Inn. The pool was a beautiful inground pool in the shape of the letter "L".
One thing I have learned about my father now that I am an adult is that he likes to weave tales. Tales that make things seem better than they are and I now question the validity of this tale.
"Kids, what do you think that L stands for?"
I was the first to take a stab at it, "love?"
"Great guess, Michelle, but think of a big celebrity," our father replied.
My sister, Jennifer, being the perpetual smartass that she was and still is said, "L-vis?"
"All right, you will never guess, let me help you out. What is your favorite television show right now?"
Back then 'Little House on the Prairie' was the bomb! I was often told back then that I looked like Laura Ingalls. I would FORCE my mom to braid my hair almost every single day so I would look like my doppelganger. I would have fantasies that Pa Ingalls would become my real dad.
My dreams often consisted of some bizarre accident that would capture the national news and Michael Langdon would swoop in and take us children under his wing to be his own. And at some point he would tire of my siblings and force them to go live with our grandmother.
Screw that dream, I could possibly swim in Michael Langdon's pool????
I screamed out with so much enthusiasm that it even caught myself off guard, "MICHAEL LANGDON????!!!!???!!!"
Now our dad never officially said yes, but the smile on his face led us to believe that my guess was right. I walked around the shape of the "L" just imagining my REAL dad, Pa Ingalls, doing breast stroke in the pool. I envisioned him tanning on the deck that wrapped around the deep end of the pool. I could see him darting across the hot pebbled concrete to the shallow end stairs as his feet were burning in the heat. I could imagine him sliding down the windy slide, his big white teeth glistening in the sun.
I imagined him all over the house and a smile of my own took over my entire face. I glanced at my dad and was in awe that he made this happen. Then I wondered HOW did he make this happen? My smile started fading as I wondered more. Before this home we lived in a dump not even 20 yards away from a railroad track in Huntington, West Virginia. We were one mountaintop away from being a HBO documentary about children of the Appalachian Mountains. How did we go from that to living in Pa Ingall's old house??
To be cont'd. :)
