My folks tore down our playhouse years ago. I hadn’t thought about it in a long time. We called it the Dollhouse and it was home to so many of our adventures. Years ago, when I visited my mother’s home one last time, I was sad to see that it was gone, the imprint of the building in the red dirt, concreted rocks in the corners that were the only foundation, and two small impressions that used to be the flowerbeds, one on each side of the door.

My father and grandfather built the Dollhouse for us when I was young. It was tall enough for us to stand up inside and there were exposed rafters from which to hang stuff. There were just the two of us back then, my older sister and me. The outside was framed and sided with old barnwood shiplap. The roof was made of tin, material taken from some other barn project. The inside consisted of bare stud walls with shelving, old green vinyl flooring left over from a long-ago kitchen remodel and remnants of some pieces of tin and wallpaper from another old home project. I divided my side into a kitchen, den, and bedroom. I remember that for some reason, the doll bed was made of metal. The place was tiny, but I made room for my dolls and other paraphernalia. I dreamed I was a fantastic cook, and filled various small jars collected all over the neighborhood with various grasses, sand, red and black dirt. I pretended those were spice jars. I had a little stove and small pots and pans and made masterpieces that consisted of slabs of wood for steaks, brown rocks for bread, various greens from the big garden for salad, and rocks for potatoes. (Yes, my mother taught us about healthy food, most of it grown in our own garden.) I remember my sister had other cool furniture on her side, such as a table and chairs, and a highchair. Her dolls always seemed more sophisticated than mine, but that is another story. Mine were a ragtag bunch, like what my friends would become in the future.

The men in the family would get together in the spring of each year and paint all the corrugated tin roofs – the barns, my grandmother’s house, and the Dollhouse. We wanted to help but it was so hot on the roof and my dad was afraid we’d fall off, so we played in the dirt below, the silver paint dripping on us. My mother would yell at us to come away and we would run back into the woods, avoiding baths as long as we could.

The roof of the Dollhouse always seemed to get rust spots earlier than most of the other buildings. I suppose it was because we were under a stand of trees. The pine trees appeared to be especially corrosive to the metal. My father would repair each spot that he saw, and then they would paint another layer of silver paint over them. It was only a matter of time before the roof would completely deteriorate in the Georgia humidity and rain and fall into the house.

My father and grandfather situated the Dollhouse behind the workshop/barn/carport that they built when my parents were first married. I noticed on many occasions when I visited, that both the barn and the Dollhouse were sagging and leaned a little to the right – as was expected after all those years of standing.

The tractors and mowers, covered in tarps, were still parked behind the barn. They looked like they hadn’t been used in a long time. In the past, my dad and mom mowed about ten of the forty-five acres we owned as homage to the new spring growth. The clothesline’s T-shaped wooden poles were still standing, also leaning a little but to the left (pun intended). Three galvanized steel cables comprised the lines where we hung the washing. The lines were not there anymore. We didn’t have a dryer in those days. In my family’s way of thinking, why would we want one when we had three girls to take care of that task? We probably just couldn’t afford one. And, when winter came, clothes froze on the line. (And that is another story.)

When my younger sister came along, my dad built wooden rails to divide the small space into three rooms that created three homes within one. The youngest got the smallest section that had no window. Each of us had small doll furniture including doll beds, tables and chairs, dishes, and pans. We each had what my mother called pallets (The origin of this word is French. It means a narrow hard bed or straw-filled mattress. The name was a chiefly southern word meaning a temporary bed made from bedding that consisted of old quilts, arranged on the floor, especially for a child.) We spent many hot and humid days inside on these pallets, reading, drawing, or coloring or making our dolls talk to us about their adventures.

The Dollhouse was a place where we would retreat from the chores, the sun or my mother’s incessant nagging (a trait I unfortunately inherited and must remind myself to hold in check when things aren’t completed as fast as I think they should). We could read, play, or go anywhere that our imaginations would take us. When we were inside, we lived as neighbors, not bickering, and it was mostly peaceful.

It was a safe place for us kids to stay on the land and think about the world we lived in. I worried a lot about who I would become in those days, and never sorted it out until much later. My mother told me I would ride in the police car with my grandfather at an incredibly early age, standing on the front seat right next to him, his arm around me and the other on the huge driving wheel. We didn’t have baby seats or seatbelts, and it was a wonder I survived my first year!

When I was older, I would later ride with a cousin who was also a police officer in another town. Little did I know I would follow their path for most of my adult life.

I would love to hear of your childhood adventures in your own dollhouses. Stay tuned for Part II tomorrow!