Grades One through Six I attended a Catholic private school in White Oak, which is in Montgomery County. I became close friends with a kid who was the year behind me, and although we’ve mostly lost touch these days (if you’re into old fashioned RPGing, you might know of his recent work with a company down in Atlanta), I remember the first time his Mom brought him over to play: “I know this house!” she said, having grown up in the area. One of her friends had previously lived in the same house, and she herself had come over for play dates.

I grew up in a section in PG County that I always knew to be Adelphi — when my parents made me memorize my address, it was Adelphi, Md. And then, long after having moved away, I learned we were really probably in Hyattsville, but we were all putting our addresses down as Adelphi for some reason. Googling the old house address today, I learned we were actually in Hillendale — again, according to the Interwebs.

So whether I spent my first twelve or thirteen years living in a house in Adelphi, Hyattsville, or Hillendale is a mystery that I shall obfuscate by simply describing my home town as “Adelphi”, I will always have the fondest memories of that house, nearly at the end of Towhee Avenue. And when I say “end”, I don’t mean “cul-de-sac”, because it wasn’t — the road just literally came to an end, there was a guard rail, and then lots and lots of trees.

The house itself was a colonial. Facing it, you’d see two big picture windows on the main floor flanking a big front door and a recessed porch. To the right hand side, a carport. On the upper level, three dormer windows. A big willow tree in the front yard.

Entering the foyer, you were confronted with the stairs which ran horizontal to the entry. The stairs to the lower level weren’t blocked off, you could stand at the wood banister and look straight down onto the stairs. Neither, for that matter, were the stairs to the upper level. To the right of the foyer was the “L” shaped kitchen and eat-in space. From here was the direct access to the carport. Interlocking with the kitchen’s L was another L, this containing a rear-facing bay window in the parlor (from this, you could see the USDA Library), and the dining space. Although there was a formal dining room, I don’t recall actually having a formal dining room table. In the eat-in kitchen was the table my mom’s mom had been given as a wedding present. It was mine, actually, until I moved to DC — old but beautiful, rickety, but I plan on getting it out of storage when I move to a larger place.

On the left hand side of the main floor were the living quarters. My bedroom contained the left-hand picture window, and it was large and awesome, including a window on the side wall, and a fairly spacious closet. If I recall correctly, the wall was a shade of yellow, upon which my Mom had made stencils and painted a scene of a train crossing the country all along the upper walls across the entire room. Behind my bedroom was my sister’s: a relatively small square that I recall being kind of blueish. Across the hall from her door was the bathroom we shared.

My parent’s master bedroom occupied the back quarter of the house. I recall it being a dark place, but this was probably because of the large trees in the backyard, which blocked out the light. A small corridor lined with closets led to a bathroom.

Upstairs, the floor was hardwood. A corridor open to the foyer had direct access to a rather garish blue-tiled bathroom. At either end of the corridor was a large open room, each the mirror image of each other, with one dormer window, and a side window. There were no rear windows, and as I recall, a panel on the left-side room could be opened, leading to a crawl space which accessed the middle dormer window. I recall my cat, Tigger, slipping inside once and being lost in the rafters, until she emerged a while later, face dusty and cobwebbed. I can’t recall exactly what these room were used for: at one point, my Mom’s quilt studio occupied one of them, at another point, a TV room was in one. I suppose one must’ve been a guest room.

The basement level was divided into two sections: the finished, and what I like to refer to as “the back basement.” Descending the stairs, a wall divided the left hand side of the basement from the right. On either side of the stairs was a door which led to the “back basement”, which was dark, dingy, and basically an overflowing storage unit. French doors along the rear accessed the backyard, and I believe there may have been a fireplace. There was a window to the left of the French doors. I never really liked it in the basement, which served as the family room — the rear portion of the room (near the windows) was a TV viewing area, while the front part of the room was a playroom for us kids.

I miss that house. I miss those rooms. I even miss the banister, and the broken pocket door which led from the foyer to the kitchen. You know what I miss the most? The way cool 70s linoleum tile that my parents replaced some time in the 80s. Thinking on it, I don’t even remember what it looked like, but I remember, as a kid, thinking it was the neatest design ever, and that the pattern they replaced it with was uber boring.