465 Wells St. Camden, AR. Built in 1911 by the Call family then my great-grandparents, Oscar and Josie Knight, bought it in 1943. Originally, this house sat on 10 acres and was a self-sufficient farm with livestock, chickens, garden, and fruit trees. My grandmothers family had lived one county over all her life and moved "to town" after she'd moved to San Diego to marry my grandfather before he was shipped off to fight in WWII. She lived her when she came home to have my mother and they both lived here until my grandfather came home from the war.
3,100 square feet. Big even by today's standards. My great-grandparents left a larger home in the country and moved here because there were less children living at home at this time. In total, there were 8 kids; 5 girls and 3 boys. This house had 6 bedrooms and at the time, no indoor plumbing. After Oscar died in 1950, Josie was faced with 3 children still living at home and a mortgage to pay. She had the inside plumbed for a bath downstairs and one up as well as making two apartments upstairs with sinks for a kitchen area. She needed the rental income to cover the mortgage and things the land could not provide. She was also a seamstress - to this day if I go home there are still people that talk about the clothes she made for them and she stopped sewing for people around 1980. She was also a really good woman and she loved her children more than anything. Proof? There was a clause in Oscar's will that stated if Josie ever remarried she would loose the house and it would go to his nearest relative. It was to always be a place where she alone could welcome her family and everyone who came through the doors was welcome to stay as long as they needed to. I don't know that she would have ever been interested in marrying again but she did give up the opportunity to make sure her family always had a place to come home to.
I grew up going to the this house along with all the offsprings of the 8 children, my great aunts and uncles and my second cousins. I'm an only child so my extended family was my family. Every Sunday was a reason to get together and there would be 30-50 people at the house at one time. The dining room sat 10 people but that was for adults. There was a table for 6 in the kitchen but until someone was 18 or older, you would either sit outside at the picnic table, inside on the stairs, or at the ironing board (this was the last stop before the kitchen table). All of this was a growing tradition since the home was purchased by my family and continued strong until the mid 90's.
Josie died in 1988 and everyone used her legacy as a reason to stay close but when the first son died in 1992, the first daughter in 1995, then my grandmother that same year, things and traditions started to trail off. My grandmother's generation was unstoppable and inseparable. Their children were not so coherent in that mindset and today we see a house still standing but nobody visits the cousin that now lives there.
I moved away in 2001 and that was amid a scandal that rocked our family to its core. One of my mother's first cousins talked everyone into letting him handle a timber transaction for the old home place that was originally Oscar and Josie's home they'd left to buy this house. They tore down the previous house and sold the lumber but kept the 200 acres they had farmed cotton on and left it to it's own natural continuation and by 2000-2002 there was rich virgin timber admittedly ripe for the picking. Everyone cashed in but none more than the cousin that initiated the deal. My mother was the only person that didn't let him invest her share and she was the only one that didn't loose everything as well. Even though we found out he'd already taken more than 1/2 the value of the cuttings without telling anyone he also lost the rest on a venture much larger than himself. The funny thing is he could have lost everyone's house, car, and first born and nobody would have blamed him but lying and then stealing was what brought the entire house down. This was the first time that anyone had ever done this to our family and it came from inside. It divided the entire family and caused most to just simply go their separate ways.
I went home this weekend and saw family I'm still close to. I drove by "the hill" and saw what was my happiest childhood memories dancing through the yard and the trees. Through the debacle earlier this century, Venis, who is the last remaining brother to my grandmother, did some fancy footwork and bought the house so it would be saved from the bank foreclosures so he still owns it but he lives in Nyack, NY. I visit him often but can't now that we're in a global pandemic and his health has had a turn for the worse. He's 92.
Maybe it's a lost cause but I feel in my heart I should buy this house from him. I know I have a stronger sense of family than the rest of my clan but I can't spend this kind of money right now to buy a house in a town I don't even live in. But I want to. And like everything else in my life that I wanted to do - I've accomplished.
Next chapter - when it's written.
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