Every now and then an image will come to mind out of nowhere. A thought or a memory will appear which, after thinking on it for a while, I can’t help but wonder where it came from. Then that one random thought bends to another, like riding my bike down a winding country road.

Around every curve there’s a different scene, a new memory, a place my mind hasn’t been to in a long time. Before long, I’m not sure how I ended up where I am nor how I got started down this particular section of memory lane.

All I know is that I have traveled through a part of my life that matters to me a great deal.

I can see Uncle Clem’s house as plain as day. The old grey weathered siding. The long porch. The linoleum rugs pressed into the creases of the plank flooring. The creak of the screen doors. The water spigot on the back porch near the door to the kitchen.

That house once stood through generations of my family. Almost every cousin has a memory of that old house. The food that came out of that kitchen. The potbellied coal stoves in the bedrooms. The feathered beds.

I guess the reason that we hold on to pieces of an old house like that is because inside those walls are some of the stories that make us who we are.

It’s not the pine board walls or the single light bulb in the center of the room that speak to us. It’s the faces and the sounds and the lives that were lived out in that place.

I’ve always wished that I knew the house that belonged to D-Daddy, my grandfather. It wasn’t so long ago that I asked my cousin to tell me about that house. I wanted to know if he could describe it to me. A pencil drawing on a napkin. Anything to help me see that house more clearly.

Why would I want to know about a house that burned to the ground before I was born? Who cares where the kitchen was and which bedroom my granddaddy slept in. How high were the ceilings? How many fireplaces? Why would knowing these things matter?

It matters because I know bits and pieces of what it was like to grow up in that house. Through my dad’s stories I can see the wooden bucket sitting on the kitchen counter, fresh water drawn from the well. I can see D-Daddy’s pearl-handle pistol hanging on a nail over the fireplace. There are times I feel like I’ve been in that house even though I know it’s not possible.

The house I grew up in was built on the very spot where the old house burned. It was 1954/55. Mom and Dad, with my sister, lived with Byron Coker in town while it was being built. A brick house on a slab. Two bedrooms, one bath, a kitchen and a living room. I came along the next year.

In 1961, two more bedrooms, another bath and a den were added. My footprints are still visible in the concrete that was poured for the back porch beside the den.

When I think of that house, I think of what it looked like only incidentally. What I remember most is the feeling of that place. The things that made it a home. The warmth of the gas stove in the living room. The sound of the attic fan on a hot summer’s night. My dad sitting in his regular chair at the table.

“Here. Pull my finger,” he’d say.

Mama would shush him. “John.”

The house I see holds everything I know about some of the most important years of my life. I can hear my mama stirring her spoon in a green, glass coffee cup. I can feel the coolness of the linoleum tile floor on my bare feet. The sound of the front door when Dad got home from work. Carol Burnette on the TV. Hot, steaming grits spooned onto my plate.

Mama: “Lord, have mercy, John. I got a little heavy with the salt on the grits this morning.”

Dad: “I don’t reckon I’ll need to take any salt tablets at the foundry today, then.

Not everything could be contained inside those walls, though. When I was a kid, my parents and their friends would sit around in the lawn chairs out in the backyard for hours. They reminisced. They told stories. The shade from the massive pecan trees and the breeze that blew through the yard from the pastures on either side of the house made it easy to sit for a spell.

I wandered miles and miles across that farm. A hundred acres seemed like an entire country to a kid with a BB gun and a sling shot. I knew every cow path. I knew every creek crossing. I can still follow in my mind every terrace across the back pastures.

It’s funny. I’ve lived in my house on Palmetto Creek longer than I lived at home growing up. And I’m well invested in this house. A lot of memories here. I would bet a lot of memories for my kids, as well.

But my most cherished memories are back home. And now, there’s no one left in my family but me who really knows that house and the stories it could tell.

Whenever I see an old, abandoned house, I think about the life that once filled it. The suppers around the table. The laughter at Christmas. The warm blankets on cold beds.

If the windows are broken out and the roof is falling in, it makes me sad to think of all the lost stories. The memories from inside those walls that are gone. And one day, someone will tear it down without a thought of what it once might have been.

My homeplace is changing. A couple years ago I went there only to find the old barn had been torn down. The one my grandfather built. The one on the cover photo of this story and every GB story that I write. That barn is gone.

And with it, a part of me is gone.

I took Marion to my homeplace a few months ago. There was no evidence of anyone around, so I pulled in and parked in the old driveway. We kicked around the yard a little bit, sharing old stories of growing up.

I was dying to see inside but knew better than to try one of the doors. I decided to walk up between the bushes and take a peek at my old bedroom through the window.

I wish I hadn’t.

It was nasty. Unkept. Trashed. No one has lived here for a while, but I had hoped for something better. The ceiling had fallen to the floor. Old carpet half rolled up. The walls were water damaged.

I can’t tell you exactly what I felt when I got in the truck that day. But I can tell you that it’ll be hard for me to go back there.

My life there is gone. But no matter.

I can still see it from here.