Barbara J. Hamby

Gypsy Feet

Sunday we attended a fiftieth birthday party for my son-in-law at their apartment in Gresham. The weather was hot, but the room was cooled by fans, and when we went out to the yard for barbecue, there was plenty of shade.

My son and daughter began reminiscing about the number of houses we had lived in during their lifetimes. I guess there must have been gypsy in my soles, or my genes. I realized that I haven’t written that story for my memoir collection. Fortunately, I have sisters who keep track of those things and I’ll be spending some time with them the end of this month.

We had some good laughs at some of the stories and remembered some that were not so funny.

A few years back, a newspaper had a contest for essays about most memorable moves and I wrote about my “move from (or to) Hell.” My husband and I had purchased a house, sold ours, and I was having the moving van loaded when I received a call that the loan had not cleared. My husband was out of town, my teen-age daughter was very ill with Asian flu and my four-year-old son was with me. Fortunately, my mother was taking care of my daughter.

I persuaded the moving company to keep our belongings on the truck overnight and called my employer. I knew he had a vacant house for sale, and asked if we could rent it temporarily. He agreed, and we began moving our things in the next morning. The house was full of mice and had broken pipes that leaked water through the ceiling from the second floor when the water was turned on. Eventually, the mice were exterminated and repairs were made so that we were comfortable in that rental for several months.

We found another house to buy in that neighborhood and moved into it. It, too, had a few problems since it had been vacant for about a year and occupied by hippy squatters for part of that time. That, and other adventures like it, will color the tales of many moves.