I remember the smell of The Little House. It smelled a little like dirt and mildew and of the oil stove sitting in the far corner of the tiny front room. The house smelled of cooking, it smelled of the bathroom, it smelled of every kind of flower growing in the yard… and it smelled of welcoming.

I wish Grandma and Grandpa were still alive so that I could ask them about the origin of the little house. All I know is that it was a converted single-car garage that sat just back from the house, creating the border on the east side of Grandma’s beautiful yard.

Just behind the little house was the large burning barrel hidden by vines, accessible through a small opening, creating a small space that was always cool on the hottest summer days, a perfect place for us children to hide, as well as spiders and garter snakes.

Grandpa had closed off the garage door. It wasn’t even discernible that the tiny house had at once been a garage. Instead, he opened two doors, one at the front side of the garage, and one at the back end of the garage, both opening into the garden. Wooden panel doors had been installed as well as wooden screen doors so that as we went in and came out, the screen doors would slam shut with a familiar bang. All the time the adults would yell at us kids… ” don’t slam the door”, they would shout.

He built a wall separating the living/bedroom space from the kitchen and divided off a small square room beyond the kitchen for the toilet.

The first room one entered was just large enough for a full-size bed, an overstuffed chair, a dresser, and a small wardrobe with an oil stove in the far corner. Built into the wall was a door opening into the kitchen. If memory serves me, the living/bedroom space and the kitchen were approximately the same size.

The kitchen served well. There was a white metal cabinet with storage and a sink. Just across from that, was a yellow Formica table with two matching chairs that served for food preparation, for eating, for writing letters, or for having friends and family over for coffee and maybe a good gossip fest. Beside the sink, Grandpa built a small pantry. On the back wall stood the stove and beside that a small refrigerator. In the wall closest to the back door, Grandpa built what I will call a toilet room because that was all that was in there. It was all there was room for.

In each room, Grandpa had built a window overlooking the garden, except in the bathroom, where one looked out into the shady, cool space where the burning barrel sat.

The entire little house was covered in wooden shingles painted a warm green. Eventually, a beautiful vine grew over the house whose leaves turned a brilliant red in the fall.

I don’t know if Grandpa foresaw or knew or already had a reason for converting the garage into the little house. I’ll never know. But what I do know is that every member of our immediate family, at one time or another, lived in the little house… except for me.

I have photographs of Mom and Dad living there. Then there was Auntie Wilma with her first husband, Bob and then with her second husband, Jim. Next, I think it was my brother and his first wife, Patty. Then there was my sister Kristi with her first husband Mark, and then I think there was my cousin Jeff and his wife Gloria or maybe he lived there alone.

Babies and memories were made in the little house. Steve was conceived and born there, and I believe I was, too. Steve has five children, one of them might have been conceived there and Kristi has seven, and I know that at least one must have been conceived there. If that little house could talk, I know the secrets to be told would surprise and maybe even shock us all.

I wonder if Grandpa had foreseen that he would provide a small but cozy home for so many of us as each was building their family. Whether he knew it or not, that’s exactly what he did.

---

P.S. My dad’s cousin, Carolyn, just wrote to me after reading this story to tell me that Grandpa converted the garage for Grandma’s mother, Ida Bell Gilbert Womack. Great-grandma died in 1947. That means Mom and Dad moved into the little house the year that my brother was born, almost immediately when the little house came vacant. For me, another gap in the family history is solved.