Opinion : Going home, at home

When we moved back to Vinton in 2004, we were, in effect, moving “home.” We were moving back to Iowa, to my hometown, to the area we both grew up. Since we’ve been back, we’ve encountered a lot of people who have moved away and come back in a similar way

But this week, at least for me, we appear to have come ALL the way home

For the last two years we have been living in a beautiful rented house. Because of a lot a reasons, we aren’t committed to buying a house right now and we’ve been lucky to have been in the house we’ve been in. In a shaky real estate market, we’ve been lucky to find a homeowner who saw the logic in having an occupied house bringing in some income, instead of a long-term vacant one, bringing in nothing.

But one of the dangers of living in a house with a “For Sale” sign in the front yard is the danger that someone could actually buy it. Two weeks ago, we got the call we’d been dreading: The house had been sold and we needed to be out by mid-February. On top of several other issues that had been going on in our lives, the lack of available rental housing, the prospect of impending homelessness,. was not a real cheery holiday thought

Then came last week. Driving toward downtown on C Avenue, my eyes glanced left -- as they always do -- when I passed 809 C Ave. Gray and white, newly-sided, vacant, but a bit shopworn over the years, it is -- and always has been to me -- home.

My parents and I moved to Vinton in 1961 and for the first two-and-a-half years in town we were renters. Then, sometime in early 1964, we bought a house. Situated in the middle of the block on busy C Avenue (also Iowa Highway 101), it was right across the street from Lynch’s Grocery and Frank’s Conoco. Lynch’s had charge accounts, deliveries and it’s own butcher shop. Frank’s had a full-service repair shop and 27-cent a gallon gas.

From then, until the the fall of 1975, my family called 809 C Ave. home. Through 12 winters and summers, all but one of my years in school, and a lot of laughter and tears, the unique little house in the middle of the block was the place we called home. When I left for UNI in 1975, Mom and Dad decided to downsize, and sold the place. I was back in September that year to help move the last things out of the house and was never in it again -- until this past Saturday.

That day last week when I drove past that vacant house, the idea popped into my head: What is the deal? No one has lived there since shortly after the July storm, and while the damage had been fixed, there had been no other apparent activity.

The next day, the journalist in me started digging around. I checked with some sources, none of who knew anything. I even called an old neighbor who lived next door in 1964 and still lives there today, and he wasn’t sure. Finally, I was able to locate the owner and after I explained my history with the house, we made arrangements to look at the house.

Saturday could not come soon enough. We met the owner at the house, and from the moment we stepped on the front sidewalk, the memories came flooding back. You could still faintly make out the paint stains there where Dad dropped a paint can off the roof in that first summer of ‘64. We walked up the steps Dad and Grandpa built in 1970 or so.

The paint and carpeting were new, but it was the same house. The 1960s wood paneling had been painted over, but was still there. There was a new thermostat, but the 1920s cast iron heat registers were still there. Almost everywhere you looked, there were cosmetic changes here and there, but for the most part, the house was as I remembered it; frozen in time for the last 36-plus years. And it was perfect.

So, in a few weeks, nearly eight years after moving home, we are finally moving home. I’m not sure it will be permanent, or even long-term. The past month has been extremely challenging for our family. And it is likely to get more challenging before it gets less.

But there is something comforting about the fact that for at least much of the next year we will spend it in the place that will always be home to the Holmes family in Vinton. No matter how rough things get, it will be nice to know at the end of the that we’ll be coming home to 809 C Ave.

It will nice to be home.