(The house, in winter 1992)

I had no idea who had lived in the house before. I found it by accident, taking a shortcut between two housing listings in South Ogden, one of which proved to have been rented by the time I got to it, and the other which was available, but had an enormous expensively landscaped yard which the landlord expected the tenant to keep up (bad) and was on 40th Street (v. bad) because it was a four-lane road and rather more heavily traveled than I wanted to put up with. The town of Ogden, Utah--- with the addition of little suburbs like Layton, Roy, Clinton, Riverside and Syracuse strung out along the highway and the perimeter of the base--- was the closest metropolis to Hill Air Force Base, where I had been assigned after eleven straight years overseas. We had only come back to the States once, in all that time, just long enough for by daughter to grasp the concept that all Americans were not military, and assigned to a little island outpost of a base, in the sea of a foreign country--- that there was, in fact, a whole continent of Americans not subject to the Articles of the UCMJ.

Whatever I could say, her own country was a foreign land, since she had been a toddler when we left, and now she was in the sixth grade. We had packed out of the house we had lived in for better than half of her lifetime, and now I was searching in the Weber county suburbs for something suitable. I looked at the housing office supplied map; Ogden was one of those logically planned places, with all the north-south streets named for presidents, and the east-west being numbered, a neat grid of streets between the line of the highway and railroad, and the foothills to the Wasatch Front, looming over the eastern perimeter like a chipped gray granite wall. It had also grown logically, from the Victorian row houses and villas along the low-numbered streets, with concentric rings of early 20th century craftsman-style bungalows, through pleasant 1940ies cottages, until developments of post-war Levittown ranchettes filled in everything south of 40th. I took a shortcut along Jefferson, the shortest distance between the two listings.

It was mid-March, and very chilly. The remnants of snow left after the latest storm were crusty and gray, and what grass was left exposed was drab yellow-brown straw. The trees and shrubbery save for a few pines and evergreens were bare masses of sticks. I crossed 36th, where the houses were pleasantly 1930ies, small but comfortably well kept, reminiscent of my grandparents’ houses. There was a “For Rent/For Sale” sign in front of one of them, and I practically stood on the brake. A little gray house with a rather unfortunate metal awning over the entry porch, two large sixteen-paned windows on either side of the front door, like a child’s drawing of a house, with a tiny garage to the left, a couple of trees and a spindly hedge out in front. The street was quiet, and seemingly untrafficked, there didn’t seem to be any of those things that alert wary househunters, like decrepit automobiles up on concrete blocks on the front lawn, clapped-out appliances in the shrubbery, or boarded up-windows. I took notice of the telephone number on the sign, and called the agent as soon as I knew the second listing was not what I wanted, arranging to meet the next morning to look at the inside.

It was cold, inside the little gray house;
“It’s been empty for a year, “said the agent. “There’ve been interested buyers, but they all want it as rental property, with a tenant.”
The front room was nice enough, taking the whole length of the front of the house, one part paneled with cheap stuff, but it was well-kept, with plain beige carpet, and long curtains in a sort of beige and gray coarse weave with an old-gold thread running though it. There was a door into a hallway that led to a bedroom with a bath adjoining, and the kitchen and dining area at the back. Another large window looked out into the back yard, which was long and filled with trees. The kitchen and dining room were papered with cheerful pattern of yellow flowers on a white background, but the carpet in this area was wholly lamentable, and I averted my eyes. In about 1960, someone had tarted the place up to look like a doublewide trailer, all cheap panel and mint green Formica.

A sliding door in the kitchen opened onto a tiny landing,
“There’s another bedroom and bathroom, down this way, in the basement, “Said the agent, “This door goes to the garage. Mind your head, going down.” There was a tall cupboard over the tiny, steep staircase, and at the bottom, a huge storage closet under the stairs. “Root cellar”. He opened the door, into an earth-walled space under the main house floor, a couple of rickety wooden shelves hanging from the joists, a space that breathed chill, and the smell of spiders and long-gone vegetables. The little basement bedroom, directly underneath the bedroom upstairs, had two windows high in the walls, just underneath the ceiling. There was a heater, fairly new, and a swamp cooler with a brand new water pump, and a washing machine but no dryer.

“There’s a closeline out in the back,” said the rental agent, “And in the winter you can hang stuff to dry here.” A few clothespins still depended from a number of wires stapled to the joists over the washing machine. “You want to look at the back yard? There’s a vegetable patch out there… two storage sheds… supposed to be electricity in one of them.”
We went out the door into the garage. I looked at it very thoughtfully; it had been built for smaller cars than the Very Elderly Volvo, and I might not have more than a foot or so of clearance on ether side of the garage door. The door at the very back of the garage had a broken window, and melting snow had leaked along the roof, and dribbled into the doorway, creating a large stalagmite of ice in the doorway. The agent looked embarrassed as he wrenched the door open, and I said,
“That would have to be fixed.”

In the back, underneath the dining area window, was a paved terrace area, shaded by a much abused tree, with a thick trunk from which several branches had been cut away.
“Willow tree,” Said the agent. “That center branch is still alive--- it shades the whole back of the house in the summer afternoons.” Another tree stood farther back, a huge, umbrella shaped thing.
“Catalpa tree… and this one farthest back--- that’s a bearing cherry tree.”
“Really?” I said. It almost made up for the horrible carpet. I could see why the house might have been empty for a year; any sensitive soul would have taken one look at the hideous medley of orange, mustard and dark brown swirls and curlicues and run away screaming.

“And the hedge along that side is apricot trees, and along this…” he gestured towards the vegetable patch, and the tiny shed which might once have housed chickens, “Is all lilac bushes.”
“I’ll have to think about it, “ I said, but as the agent later confessed, as I was signing the rental agreement, he knew he I was hooked the minute he mentioned the cherry tree.