THE CLINE FAMILY HOME

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This is not Catherine Grace’s family home. No, this beat-up, burned-up, tiny speck of a house belonged to my grandmother’s family, now known to all of us as simply the Cline family home.

Lives began and ended in this house. And last week a fire destroyed what was left of it. I’m sure the charred remains will be bulldozed and carried away and that will be the end of it. The memories are still there, I know, but it does seem like a part of my family’s history, as meager as it may be, is now lost.

My brother drove me to see the house yesterday, afraid that the next time I came to town, it would be gone. It’s situated on a busy, narrow road in East Ridge, Tennessee. But I can remember my daddy saying that when he was a little boy, there were was no traffic, no neighbors, just quiet.

That house haunts me, or more likely, it’s all the lives that stepped onto the wooden porch and walked through front door that are haunting me — begging me to tell their story. And as a Cline, I think it’s story that will need to be told.

Posted March 5, 2009 at 8:22 am · 2 comments · Leave a Comment

Comments

  1. Julie, March 5th, 2009, 5:14 pm

    Susan, You write beautifully even on your blog. I feel like I'm back in Looking for Salvation at the Dairy Queen reading that...it makes me ache for more!

  2. Judith Walter, March 25th, 2009, 5:00 pm

    Sometimes, I get philosophical--or a little quirky, I'm not sure which! What is it that makes us need a physical structure to call home? A place to call the “Burton Place” or the “Walter Place”. Maybe the ability to see and touch and smell and hear the hauntings in a place are needed to feel as if we really exist as part of a greater family. As each important house of my youth has been destroyed there is a sense of loss, as if a part of me was somehow gone. Or perhaps the fear that a part of me never really existed. It is said that “home is where the heart is” and that is true. But home is also where we live life. It is somehow harder to remember things of the past without the physical structure there to remind us of the details-the sights, sounds, smells, touches of life. Just my thoughts on the disappearance of homeplaces.

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Susan Gregg Gilmore