Company House

I grew up in half of a double block in the Mayflower section of Wilkes-Barre. Our home, originally a house built by a coal company was a far cry from the McMansions people are building today. I remember that house fondly, and often walk its floors in my memory.

My dad totally renovated the home after a number of years. It originally belonged to my grandmother, who passed it down to my mother. When he first moved in, my dad said that it was so drafty, he could feel a breeze, especially in the winter.

Upstairs had three bedrooms. No hallway, no bathroom, no laundry room, no balcony...just three interconnected rooms. There was one bathroom in the house, downstairs...added on. I heard that there used to be an outhouse until Uncle Pete added an inside bathroom.

The kitchen was really a great room...had a pantry (later removed) and the entrance to the cellar. The coal furnace in the cellar looked like some kind of primitive robot. The coal cellar, kind of a closet with a tiny window for the coal truck's chute, rested in a corner near the front of the cellar.

This house had a great front porch, too, protected by a huge chestnut tree for many years. As long as I could remember, a dark green rocking chair sat on that porch.

One irony about this house is that my husband, while driving the bus here in Reading, met someone else who lived in that house! What happened was my grandmother and grandfather moved the family to Baltimore for a few years and they rented it out. What a small world!

Just say you grew up in Wilkes-Barre sometime (or that your wife did) and it's amazing that you can make a connection. But the exact same house? That's serendipity, that's cool, that's family history.