This is a story set in a small Southern college town in a mid-Atlantic state during the era just after integration (the late 1970s, give or take a few years). Those subdivisions of brick one-level "ranch" houses had been built in the last two decades right outside the city limits, and the economy was about to slow down as we moved into the "malaise era." Nudity among men was commonplace in the local college's showers, there was no such thing as cable TV in this section of the state, air conditioning was still for upper-middle-class and rich people or in the department stores in the big cities about 30 to 45 minutes' drive away, and pickup trucks were strictly for work (not personal vehicles).
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This happened when I was in college, many years ago, but the memories are still fresh and clear. I'd heard we were going to have a new football coach, and that he was a black man. I didn't know what to expect; my father was a professor at the local college, but he certainly didn't have any black colleagues, and I hadn't really interacted much with the few black kids who joined my high school right after integration. So I was intrigued when the mid-1960s Chevelle coupe drove up to the house next to mine, late that warm summer evening as I was enjoying the breezes and watching the late show on TV on our upstairs screen porch.
Let me draw you a picture. I lived in what had been the last house on the edge of our 3500-person college town before the all-brick, ranch-style subdivision was built in the mid-1950s next door; mine was a traditional Southern wood frame house, built in the early 1900s by an earlier college professor, with wraparound porches on the first level and front and rear porches on the second floor. Standing in a shady grove of mature oaks and maples, with cedars lining the circular driveway, it was just about as old-school as you could get in my hometown. Even the sidewalk out front had a hitching post! And we had a porte-cochere and a carriage house that had been converted into a garage where our big 1966 Ford Country Squire wagon sat right now in solitary glory.
Just past my house on the main road leading out of town, the concrete sidewalks with the squared-off curbs ended and the long, low, brick 1950s ranch houses began. For people whose families had lived here for decades, these houses were "outside of town" or "beyond the city limits," even though the town had recently annexed the subdivision (complete with a name, "Cardinal Hills"--in itself a new thing, given that the older section of town was known only by its street names, "First" and "Second" perpendicular to "Oak" and "Beech"). Two or three driveways further, there was a subdivision sign and a dead-end street providing access to the rest of the houses.
But the house next to us was special. As ours did, it sat well back from the street, giving it almost as much gravitas as the older houses marching along the street toward the center of town. The architect had given its front a wall of windows and the builders had left most of the mature trees surrounding the house to shade it, instead of cutting everything down as they had on other lots. The most interesting part of the house, though, was the in-ground pool with a low diving board at the far end. From my seat on the back second-floor screen porch, I could see all of the back yard. Some nights, when the moon was full, I'd see deer come down and jump over the white picket fence and drink some water from the pool.
Thinking back, I remember that the house only became vacant because the older couple who built it decided they wanted to retire in Florida near the beach instead of in our small town, and their children had long since moved away.
As I said, when that Chevelle pulled into the driveway and stopped, I was intrigued. The "For Sale" sign had just been taken down the day before, so I was a bit curious as to who our new neighbors would be. I turned off the TV and waited in the warm dark night, the crickets and the streetlight my only companions as my parents were already asleep downstairs.
____
This happened when I was in college, many years ago, but the memories are still fresh and clear. I'd heard we were going to have a new football coach, and that he was a black man. I didn't know what to expect; my father was a professor at the local college, but he certainly didn't have any black colleagues, and I hadn't really interacted much with the few black kids who joined my high school right after integration. So I was intrigued when the mid-1960s Chevelle coupe drove up to the house next to mine, late that warm summer evening as I was enjoying the breezes and watching the late show on TV on our upstairs screen porch.
Let me draw you a picture. I lived in what had been the last house on the edge of our 3500-person college town before the all-brick, ranch-style subdivision was built in the mid-1950s next door; mine was a traditional Southern wood frame house, built in the early 1900s by an earlier college professor, with wraparound porches on the first level and front and rear porches on the second floor. Standing in a shady grove of mature oaks and maples, with cedars lining the circular driveway, it was just about as old-school as you could get in my hometown. Even the sidewalk out front had a hitching post! And we had a porte-cochere and a carriage house that had been converted into a garage where our big 1966 Ford Country Squire wagon sat right now in solitary glory.
Just past my house on the main road leading out of town, the concrete sidewalks with the squared-off curbs ended and the long, low, brick 1950s ranch houses began. For people whose families had lived here for decades, these houses were "outside of town" or "beyond the city limits," even though the town had recently annexed the subdivision (complete with a name, "Cardinal Hills"--in itself a new thing, given that the older section of town was known only by its street names, "First" and "Second" perpendicular to "Oak" and "Beech"). Two or three driveways further, there was a subdivision sign and a dead-end street providing access to the rest of the houses.
But the house next to us was special. As ours did, it sat well back from the street, giving it almost as much gravitas as the older houses marching along the street toward the center of town. The architect had given its front a wall of windows and the builders had left most of the mature trees surrounding the house to shade it, instead of cutting everything down as they had on other lots. The most interesting part of the house, though, was the in-ground pool with a low diving board at the far end. From my seat on the back second-floor screen porch, I could see all of the back yard. Some nights, when the moon was full, I'd see deer come down and jump over the white picket fence and drink some water from the pool.
Thinking back, I remember that the house only became vacant because the older couple who built it decided they wanted to retire in Florida near the beach instead of in our small town, and their children had long since moved away.
As I said, when that Chevelle pulled into the driveway and stopped, I was intrigued. The "For Sale" sign had just been taken down the day before, so I was a bit curious as to who our new neighbors would be. I turned off the TV and waited in the warm dark night, the crickets and the streetlight my only companions as my parents were already asleep downstairs.
