The Farmhouse

We left our beautiful house in Detroit in 1970, after race riots disturbed every one's peace of mind and security. This is when my dad and uncle were going into partnership to build houses. We were to live in Grandma Guile's small farm house.
Mom and I had all kinds of ideas on how to decorate and make the farm house our home. I guess we didn't remember how horrible this house was. The room I was assigned was too small to put a twin bed and a dresser in. I moved upstairs and my parents converted the 'parlor' into their bedroom.
I took my savings and bought wallpaper for the ceiling (yes, the ceiling) and the walls. I bought paint for the trim and curtains for the window. When I was done, it was the prettiest room in the house.
The furnace was coal fed. We would wake up in the morning with black rings around our noses. Our clothes were filthy with coal dust. The only way we could keep things clean was to hang our clothes in the bathroom where there was no heating vent.
The furnace would always go out before morning. Mom was always the first one up so she had to start the furnace. She would get June and I up for school, then Daddy to work on the house and take care of Ted. Mom held us all together.
That house was haunted, too. Every morning at two a.m., my desk would start to shake. It was a metal desk held in place by tension poles running from the floor to the ceiling. The first night it happened, I just rolled over and said,"Squirrels.". The next night I thought the same thing, but wasn't as convinced. The third night when my desk started to shake at two a. m. on the dot, I grabbed my blanket and pillow and slept downstairs. My parents traded rooms with me. My parents never had any strange experiences, but my brother, Dan and his wife Kathy, swears the house was haunted also.
And snakes. There were lots of garden snakes around there. I HATE snakes. And the pitch black of the night. I had a street light in front of my bedroom window in Detroit. I felt that I had entered the black hole. And the party line on the telephone. You couldn't talk for more than 5 minutes without someone else clicking in. I know one of the neighbors listened in on conversations because we could hear the click on, but not the click off. And I couldn't get to any stores. I didn't drive and EVERYTHING was too far to walk to. We went to 'town' once a week.
There were only a couple of cupboards in the kitchen. Everything was old.
On the whole, it was a miserable time living there. But we were together, and Daddy had promised us a new home.