A nostalgic farewell to my childhood home

Part 1: Parting ways with 210: A practical decision with bittersweet implications

Letting go of it was inevitable, yet never easy. My parents built the ranch house at 210 South General Lee Avenue in Dunn when I was two years old, and we moved into it in the spring of 1952. It has been my North Carolina anchor for the past 72 years, and now, for all practical purposes, I am homeless, in one important sense—adrift on an uncertain psychological sea in my own golden years.

Pal Benji surveying the front yard at my childhood home in Dunn, NC. Author’s photo

Deciding to sell my childhood home was a long time a’coming. My Mother lived there until her death in 2019, at 96, despite the increasingly pressing need for updating and renovation, because she felt comfortable there. She had made it a true home for almost seven decades at that point, through 32 years of widowhood—and it was there she continued to welcome her three children and six grandchildren and many of her eight great-grandchildren —and occasionally, their dogs—into a warm and loving time warp of sorts. It was there she drew comfort from her memories and her inner serenity when she lost my Daddy in 1986, two of her siblings in the 1980s, my older brother in 2016, and her oldest grandson a year later.

She watched almost all her childhood friends die along the way, as well, but adamantly refused to move into an assisted-living home, where—arguably—she might have been safer and more comfortable with her failing eyesight and need for a walker. “All those people are old,“ she told me after one reluctant visit to a very pleasant facility not far away. “I am not old.” Pure and simple, and that was that.

There was absolutely nothing wrong with Mother’s judgment—and her legendary ability to balance her checkbook, pay her own bills, and answer her correspondence proved she could still manage her own affairs quite well, if with a little occasional assistance from my younger sister and me in the final years. It took a little firm, loving insistence for her to make less than urgent repairs—we finally got that leaking shower repaired, despite her insistence that she could live with it. (I couldn’t.) Ditto for the aging refrigerator that needed a new gasket to stop the worsening leaks (Beth nagged her into replacing it). But she would not have the worrisome dishwasher, stove, or washing machine replaced (I finally did all three after her death). Too much money. “I can’t afford it.” End of story.

She finally stopped driving at 92 because she no longer trusted her reflexes—a prudent but problematic decision—and then that 20 year-old Ford sedan sat in her driveway behind the house, almost untouched and frankly, almost undrivable with flat tires and a dicey electrical system, for the next four years, to reinforce the image of well-tended occupancy loaned her by the beloved yard man she continued to pay to mow and trim and rake our nearly half-acre lot. Until her once-a-week maid became too old and infirm to cope with even the light housework Mother needed done, she continued to pay her and grumble about her increasingly feeble performance (poor dear Evelyn was almost as old as Mother). She even went to church when she could.

But she still went shopping at the local grocery store she preferred—whenever Beth or I could get down there to take her out—and went to get her hair fixed at the local beauty shop she had used weekly or so for 50 years. She usually cooked for herself, even though only one eye on the stove really worked well—and the oven, not at all. Long story. She had her microwave (another Beth triumph). She was okay with all that, even if we weren’t. It was the security of her home that kept her going.

About six months before her final illness, after she started using a walker, we prevailed upon her to hire an occasional companion during the day, to check on her and do small tasks on days Beth could not get down from Raleigh. It was a stopgap measure as problematic as it was helpful. She did not like anyone underfoot (or under-walker). Frustrating as it might be to us, she could not live without her independence.

“I will be dead two weeks after I leave this house,” she told Beth when her final journey began in January 2019—first to the local emergency room, then to a larger regional hospital, and finally to a nearby rehab center—where true to her word, she died two weeks later, to the day, after leaving 210. They tried valiantly to “fix” the ailment which finally stopped her amazingly resilient heart, but she and her doctors knew she was too old to survive the surgery that might have prolonged her life by a few months—and she was finally ready to join her parents, my Dad, and my brother and nephew (“the Waynes,” as they were all named), anyway. So she went to join them.

Saying goodbye to Mother was a wrenching experience, emotionally and psychologically. Keeping the house open and in use after her death was one way to keep her indelible memory alive and breathing, I guess. I still lived 250 miles away, in Alexandria, Virginia, and thought I could use the house as a sort of writer’s retreat; I wrote occasional historical books and journal articles. It was kind of like camping out, in some ways—that damned stove and water pressure problems in the kitchen!—but I endured the minor discomforts. I could work quite easily as a remote editor from there, after I had Internet service installed—and even had a little fun playing Harry Homeowner, doing odd jobs and deciding what major repairs could be put off a bit longer.

Benji, my traveling poodle, loved to come with me and guard his granny’s living room chair for weeks at a time, from folks who rang the doorbell. He even hid under her bed for much of the first year.

* * * * * *

In 2021, my wife and I decided to move to Broward County, Florida, from our longtime residence outside Alexandria, Virginia. The move nearly killed both of us. Downsizing from a four-bedroom house into a two-bed condo near her own mother’s residence was backbreaking work. What would not fit into 1,050 square feet—and that was a lot!—was either sold, discarded, or stored in Dunn. First mistake …

Margaret and I had lived around the world when I was still with the U.S. State Department, and had acquired many pieces of furniture, paintings, and knickknacks during 36 years of marriage. My library of books—after all, what writer doesn’t keep every book he has ever bought?—was boxed up and taken down to 210, where I duly bought new bookcases and tried to make aesthetic repairs to the house there, hoping to entice her into one day living there with me in retirement. No dice.

My globetrotting wife, a former airline flight attendant, had no intention of withering on the vine in my hometown. She still has not quite forgiven me for leaving the State Department in 1997—that is another story entirely—but she consented only to spending a week there on her way down to Florida on the auto-train. Too dull, by far.

Dull, of course, suited this stick-in-the-mud homebody just fine. Not Margaret, a glamorous native of Jamaica who still travels to Grenada whenever it suits her—she just survived Hurricane Beryl—or Spain, or Las Vegas, or anywhere an airplane can get her. I have largely given up air travel—just too uncomfortable for my 6-1 frame and creaking knees—in favor of car travel, except in emergencies. Haven’t had an emergency in five years …

When Benji and I finally got down to Pembroke Pines, Florida, in September of 2021, we soon realized that regular trips back to our “vacation” home in Dunn would become a life-saving interruption. An 800-mile trip by automobile up Interstate 95 was grueling but absolutely necessary every three months—even if it required two weeks or more of recuperation. I wanted to visit my grandchildren in nearby Wilmington, my sister Beth and her family in Raleigh—and more than that, I needed to breathe a little.

Florida, for the uninitiated, is NOT for the fainthearted … either weatherwise or politically speaking … one acerbic friend of mine calls it the “first failed state”… and while living in a 55+ golf and tennis club is not all that uncomfortable, it is more than a bit like stepping into another dimension. Many of my neighbors are in their late 80s and mid-90s, with all of the health and mobility issues one might expect—and like my Mother, insist on living alone in widowhood.

My beloved mother-in-law, now 102, has been confined to her bed for the past year, after a fall that broke her hip; therapy, to allow her to walk again, failed. She lives at home with my sister-in-law, but requires almost constant care. I visit her every chance I get; Benji loves his granny. But she is increasingly unhappy that she can no longer get up and walk around or attend church. Deeply religious, I think she longs to join God; I just kiss her forehead and say “Not today, Rita, not today.”

Benji and his much-beloved granny. Author’s photo

Benji needs to be walked five or six times a day—he is getting old (14) and has his own health issues. I have also become a regular dogwalker for one of my older neighbors, who for some still-unexplained reason, got herself another energetic Schnauzer puppy at 86 but has health issues that make it difficult for her to take the long walks Misty so badly wants. Guess who stepped into that twice-a-day role—except during my NC trips, when Margaret had to play grudging daily backstop? She has to come up in the mornings and visit Margaret, for reassurance …

Not now, Misty! Don’t you have a home of your own to go to? Author’s photo

My trips to Dunn continued uneventfully until late 2023, when I began to realize that certain issues with 210 were not improving, and not really even stable, but slowly deteriorating—and the $600-a-month expense my sister and I have jointly endured since 2019 just to keep the lights and other utilities on, the taxes paid, and the insurance in force was only the iceberg tip of our long-term financial obligations.

Neither of us had the ready money it would take to replace the roof—or the windows, or the wooden siding, or the failing HVAC system—and the only sensible choice, it seemed, was to put the house up for sale. The house was well built and had “good bones”—but like my aging but still serviceable 2009 Hyundai sedan, needed a tune-up for the 21st century. It was never “fine,” as even my mother admitted occasionally, but it was mighty good.

We had discussed that option several times since 2019, but I was never ready to part with 210—my safe haven from hurricanes and other forces of nature—and Beth was more neutral on the subject. As long as it was there, she knew I would come up regularly to visit. When we both agreed it was time to sell, so be it. We have always been very close, and we both wanted to maintain that supportive sibling relationship.

We both loved that house—it was the backdrop, of course, for our wonderfully carefree childhood, and a reminder of both our adored parents—but we knew the time would come when it would become far less of a treasure chest and much more of a money pit (shades of Tom Hanks’s eponymous 1986 film). It was tipping toward money pit last Christmas, when one thing and then another went wrong and I decided the time had come to investigate the possibility of a sale, but to an investor. In this world of high interest rates and hard-to-get mortgages, finding a suitable private buyer with a ready mortgage and a quick sale seemed like a pipe dream.

No, I will not name the firm I turned to. All I will say is that it was NOT “Sell to Bobby,” the earnest and ubiquitous South Florida TV advertiser who promises cash offers for any house, from a “total fixer-upper (tumbledown shack) to perfect condition (White House).” Nor was it one of the endless stream of cold-text inquirers who somehow got wind of the transferred ownership in 2020 and besieged both Beth and me regularly for the next four years. Vultures …

What I got instead was a seven-month-long primer in the unreal, perplexing world of cash offers and the unexpected hoops you must learn to jump through … when you have three or four investors vying for a house, it is one thing; when you have only one at a time, it is different, and far less beneficial or encouraging.

Maybe nothing is as simple as anyone would hope in this modern world. Having bought, owned, and sold five houses before, if always through normal real estate firms to new owners who planned to reside there—four of them for increasingly handsome profits—I thought I knew something on the subject. Yes, I expected to have to endure inspections and repairs to suit a picky buyer. But just getting the house ready for showing this time would require hard, swift decisions about decluttering and disposing of cherished possessions no one in the family had room for—including all those books …

I was intent on returning to Florida before New Year’s Day. So whatever we decided, much of the planning would have to be done long-distance … plus, I would still have to come back to Dunn, and spend a month or two up there in the spring cleaning it out nonstop. Beth could only do so much on short day trips … and this was a team effort.

Next, the awful truth about “pack rats” … and changing one’s own stripes.

Next time: A long walk off a short pier into not-so-shallow water