A House with a Tin Roof

While growing up everyone should have positive experiences and memories which they can take with them into adulthood.

By Colleen K Pulley

When I was a little girl, we moved from Nebraska to Oregon. My Father had only a promise of a job, so money was tight. With four kids at the time, and a “stay at home” wife, I’m sure it was with a sense of gratitude that after a few days in town, Dad found an old blue house on the McKenzie River for rent.

To me it was the most wonderful place I could have asked for. I did not see the sagging porch or the torn screen door. I saw a house with a front yard overgrown with flowers and a squeaky gate. There was a rusted bell at the door and a crooked knocker. The paint was peeling, and the railing needed repairs. But the magic of the house to me, centered on the fact that it had a tin roof, and instead of a back yard, the rear of the house stood on poles that sat on the bank of the river.

There were three girls, so the back room was assigned to us. What was a marvel was the fact that instead of a window, there was a Dutch split door. It literally opened out over the river! Dad put a paddle lock on the lower half of the door, and the top half became our window. From this window I spent hours watching the birds, and other woodland creatures come and go to the riverbank. I would listen to the croaking of the frogs, and the hooting of the owls. I fell asleep to the plunking of the rain on the tin roof.

Sometimes my dad would come into my room in the early evening. He would take the key from his pocket and open the bottom half of the door. As we munched on a snack, we would drop a fishing line into the water and perched with our feet dangling over the river. We would talk about the things dads and daughters talked about. Why was the sky blue? Why did the frogs croak? And what a lucky thing it was that we were able to live in such a wonderful house. Once in a rare while, we would actually catch an unsuspecting fish.

We lived in that house for two years and these were remembered as two of the most wonderful years of my childhood. The day we moved out, I thought how lonely the little house looked, and felt a lump in my throat as I left. We were the last people to live in the house, as it was torn down for a parking lot. But always that little house lives in my memories. I can’t help but remember the sound of the rain falling on the tin roof or of the time spent fishing from that bedroom door with my dad.

I always dreamed that when I grew up, I would build a house on the river, and it would have a tin roof. Of course, that never happened. I have lived in big cities, and in what my dad would laughingly call “Ticky Tacky” houses, built in suburban neighborhoods. No tin roofs or overgrown yards. No croaking frogs or hooting owls, no woodland creatures coming to the riverbank, and definitely no Dutch door that swung out over the river.

My children never had any of those experiences, but I do tell them of some of those experiences, so they can understand me better. I want them to know that once upon a time a little girl resided in a tumbled down house on the edge of the McKenzie River. I want them to go there in their imagination, and listen to the croaking frogs, and the rain on a rusted tin roof, and maybe wish they could have been there too.

We are each unique. We live in different circumstances and respond differently to the same conditions. My older sister discarded the experiences in the old blue house on the river. For her it was living in a small town, and Dad going to an afternoon matinee with her, that she relished. The key is experiencing a time spent with someone you loved, like your Mother or Father. It surrounds the relationship you have with that individual, and the love that binds you together. As my father did, I have tried to have special experiences with each of my children. I see them doing the same with their little ones today, and one day those little ones will hopefully do the same with their children.

Whether you live today, fifty, a hundred, or a thousand years ago, it is the experiences, and nurturing, and love you have, that binds you together. Remember this, and make sure you imprint in the memory of someone the experiences that tell them they were loved and cherished and nurtured, thus helping them to become a better individual.

Until next time, something to think about… Colleen

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