When the family moved to the house on River Street, it was a non-eventful day. We left the beautiful ranch house with the big barn and moved into town. Dad and a bunch of other men moved all our earthly belongings into the old Hicks family homestead. This was the place that “Harry Hicks built with only a Spirit Level and a plumb bob.”
The old house held numerous antiquities that distinguished it as a dwelling built during the ‘olden days’ which emerged still intact in the ‘modern days.’ One relic that proves my point–mounted on the back of the house was a rickety old, original straw ice box that was used for food preservation before Frigidaire made indoor refrigerators popular. The indoor bathroom had been plumbed-in after the home was originally built. Remnants where the old outhouse stood could still be found out behind the house. The pitted and crumbling concrete septic tank access was a prominent feature in the yard a few paces from the side door.
I knew this house well. It was the place that Grandma and Grandpa Hicks lived clear back as far as I could remember. Then they sold the place to Carla and Ed. Mikey and I had to stay with them when I was only a few years old. Now it was my home.
Nobody ever used the front door except when visitors came and knocked. The side door was the one we used. You enter the house and immediately see a small kitchen on the left and on the right, a dining room. Past that, the living room sprawled to the far wall. Built between the kitchen and living room was a large rock divider that contained the only heat source for the house–a big potbellied stove. To light the fire, you had to crawl down inside the rock structure where the stove was mounted.
Being the only source of heat during the frigid Salmon winters, the stove had to be stoked and kept burning from November to the middle of March, which meant we had a sizable wood pile out back.
The linoleum covered hallway past the stove structure led to the bathroom on the left, bedrooms on the right, and at the end of the hallway was a storage room. Adjacent to that was mom’s and dad’s bedroom. Standing in the storage room, you could lift a trap door which led to a wine cellar. It smelled of murk and mildew because every spring it filled with water. The back door of the house opened to a broad view of the big garden area and the tool shed loaded full of mysterious artifacts and spiders.
My new house was located right next to the Dahle Red E Mix concrete company owned and operated by Voyd. The peaceful sounds I was used to from my old home by the river were replaced by diesel cement trucks, front-end loaders, dump trucks, a rock crusher, and the septic tank building operation located just over our side fence.
Voyd was a mystery that intrigued me from the first time I saw him. He always wore a pair of grey coveralls and leather boots. I can’t remember a time I ever saw him without an old dirty nondescript baseball hat that he wore kind of crooked on his head. The most intriguing thing about this man was his choice of cigarettes. He rolled his own.
Watching him pull out a piece of paper and delicately hold it in his grizzled fingers as he gently dumped in a small pile of tobacco from a pouch was, to me, a true form of artistic acumen. After licking the side of the paper and rolling his cigarette, he would light it with a match and then draw in the smoke like it was the next best thing to heaven for him.
Voyd lived up the street with his wife, Madge. She quickly became my good friend and allowed me to go into her raspberry patch and eat her delicious berries, but only if I asked, first. Madge was an old woman that exuded the epitome of happy and charitable. Her countenance was as stark a contrast to that of her husband as a cloudy, thundering rainstorm was from a bright, clear day.
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