When I was back in Canada this summer, I stopped by the place I grew up in... not much is left actually.  A few broken down houses... and a couple that are still lived in.  The house I feel most connected to.. the one I lived in with my family from 1976 until 1984 is still standing... barely.  It stands abandoned and looking rather shabby... but still I have good memories of that house.

I remember one particularly snowy winter, there was a nice big snowbank up against the side of the house.  It was perfect for sliding down on my Crazy Carpet.  I would climb up on the snowbank which reached almost to the roof of the house, jump on the Crazy Carpet and go careening down the slope into the yard.. over and over.  It was getting late, and my mother wanted me to come in.  She tapped on the window and called me to come in.  I had to get that one more slide in... just one more.  I lined up, and then slid backwards into the dining room window.  I didn't end up in the dining room... but I did break the window... one of those big old style wooden framed windows with stained glass at the top.... in the winter time.  I was not exactly popular around home that evening.  I wonder if my parents remember that little incident?

You cannot see where that window was on the photo.  The place where the window was is covered up by the grey house.  Hmmm that's another long story.  As the family grew, we needed more room... so my parents bought the grey house next door, lifted it up and moved it up against the original yellow house.  Then knocked a hole through between the two houses right where the old (broken) dining room window was.  Result... instant double sized house, and no broken dining room window to replace.

Life in that home was... well... we had no running water in the form you probably know it.  There was a big cistern in the dug out basement under the yellow house.  We filled it with water from a 1200 liter tank in the back of a pickup truck.  This meant water rationing to save what water we had.  We started out with a hand pump in the kitchen, but that was soon replaced with a simple pressurized system my father cooked up.  We had a bathtub... first a galvanized tub we filled with heated water from buckets.. then a "real" tub with a shower once the pressure system was installed.  The toilet was a 20 liter pail in a "chemical toilet" (a metal can with a toilet seat and lid).  Heating the home was through something called a Gravity Furnace fueled by propane (LPG) and a big wood burning fireplace in the living room.  I guess you could say life there was pretty basic, but I loved it.

Hmmm I think I miss that old house...