When I was little, we lived in a beautiful home on Pages Lane, in Centerville, Utah. It had started from a one-bedroom house of rock right after the pioneers moved to the valley. From that one-room home, many families lived in the house throughout the years and rooms were added on. Eventually it grew to a large home with three bedrooms 1 ½ baths and much more.
The living room was very large and rectangle-shaped, and I’ve included a drawing I’ve made from memory, which is definitely not to scale. The front faced Pages Lane on the north side of the street.
There was a large lawn and sidewalk leading to the front door, which isn’t shown on the sketch.
To the north of the house was a furnace room which came out of the utility room. I can’t figure out how it fit, because it wasn’t very big, so I’ve just put it on where it was.
Outside to the north of the house was a root cellar—just like in Wizard of Oz with doors that opened out. It had shelves and a dirt floor. I found some of my favorite treasures there—1900s books that a former resident (an English teacher) had left behind. Most of them were small, pocket-sized hardback books, but to me they were wonderful!
As you entered the front door (main entrance), you were in the large living room. I can’t recall the placement of furniture, except for a large round oak table where we all sat for dinner (there were six children and two parents when we lived there). On the west side of the living room was a large mural painting that my mother had painted that was the visual highlight of the room.
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| our family in front of mother's painting |
The kitchen held a magic secret—it had a trap door where you could escape from the table. I can’t recall if it was in some shelves and if it went clear to the living room. However, if you were a child and you couldn’t get out of the table without lots of people moving, you could climb down onto the floor and open the bottom shelf and escape.
I recall the back door faced the north, and so did the sink, but I can’t recall if there was a window over the sink where we girls washed the dishes.
Next to the kitchen, to the west was the girls room, where my two sisters and I shared a bedroom. My youngest sister was born while we lived in the house but was not big enough to share our room (and I have no photos of her in the house). The bedroom had a set of bunk beds and a regular single bed, with a window in between. As oldest I always had the top bunk. Just west of the door was a square built-in armoire. It didn’t go to the ceiling, so there was a crawl space between it and the ceiling. I often climbed up into the crawl-space to get away from my siblings, and find a little peace. Inside the armoire was a toilet! This was our half bath.
I recall when I was about eight or nine years old, I had the Asian flu and was very sick. As I lay on my bed, I rubbed my finger across the old wallpaper. Eventually, I wore down several layers of wallpaper and came across a wallpaper that had a “swastika-like” pattern. I was sure that someone had lived in the house that was Nazi, and had covered up the wallpaper to hide their politics. It wasn’t until years later that I realized that since we lived in the house in the mid-1950s, and there were at least five layers of wallpaper over the swastika-like pattern, it probably dated back to the 1920s—before Hitler’s rise to fame. But as I lay there sick, I made stories of the people who may have put that political wallpaper up.
Just west of the girls’ room was the bathroom, with an old-fashioned tub with a wooden cabinet holding it. I recall once finding a loose board in the cabinet, and found an older brother had hidden a Playboy magazine inside it. Another toilet and a sink were the only things in the bathroom.
The utility room was west of the bathroom and I’m sure it is not in scale, but it seemed large to me. There was an old-fashioned typewriter there where I wrote stories. If you typed too fast, the keys stuck together, but to me it was magic. The entry to the utility room was not a door, but a curtain and I recall we had plays outside in the living room with the curtain the entrance.
I’m sure my parents’ room is not to scale, but it seemed HUGE to me. It was the original rock house that had been built in the 1850s, and was truly the heart of the house.
It was the neatest thing to be able to lie on my parents’ large bed, but the only memory of doing so was when I was recovering from the Asian floor. Someone gave me a “Mars” candy bar. I ate it and threw up everywhere. I still can’t face a “Mars” bar without nausea to this day.
Because of the rock walls, my parents’ room was always cool and shady and it felt wonderful to be in it. I recall my mother had a beautiful vanity of gold-colored wood. In my memory, the mirror was much larger and the wood more golden than this image I’ve located on the internet. I loved to sit on the stool and look in the mirror; but watching my mother get ready to go while sitting there was amazing. She always seemed beautiful, but when she sat there putting makeup on and her necklaces, it seemed as if she grew more beautiful by the minute.
Just south of my parents’ room was the boys’ bedroom, and I have no memory of how it was arranged, because I have no memory of being there that often. The covered porch had windows along the South and there may have been a couch or something there, but it was mainly a hallway. I do recall trying to convince my parents to let me sleep on the couch there, but they didn’t let me.
To the far north of the house, right off the utility room, was a furnace room, and I recall it had several steps going to the north. I wanted so much to have a space of my own, that I once convinced my parents to let me put my clothes and stuff there, although they never let me sleep there.
Looking back, I think that as the oldest girl in a family of seven children, I was often frustrated that I didn’t have a “place of my own.” My younger sister recalls I was always trying to get away from my sisters (her included), but I think it was hard sharing with younger siblings who were always getting into my things and messing up my stuff. My crawl space above the armoire/toilet was a place where I could escape, as well as the modified furnace room.
The outside of our house was not your typical suburban yard, either. To the north we had a cow and chickens that we raised, as well as rabbits that we raised and ate. My mother made a doll's coat out of the rabbit fur. Further to the east we had a large cornfield where I could make hideouts and put water-proof furniture in. It was a secret place in the summer where no one could find me (I thought) and I could dream and make up stories.
We had a boxer dog named Sandy, but he was fenced up most of the time. We had our own well on the large property, and behind the house to the north was fields, and pig pens.
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| My younger siblings (and friend) in front yard |
There were other memories of the front lawn. My older teen-age brother was a “Pat Boone” look-a-like and I can recall him singing in the front yard.
In 1956, the state started to put in a freeway, instead of the old Highway 89 we had lived next to, and our property was purchased and torn down to make way for it. We sang, “The freeway runs through the middle of the house,” whenever we drove down by the corner of Pages Lane and the frontage road. Now a company is on the eastern most part of our property.
Most houses are boring and looking back at them you think how old-fashioned and old they are, but when I think of our house on Pages Lane, it still seems magical in my memory.
