TumbleDweeeb

The House on West 14 Road

   In the spring of 1985, my family relocated from 112 John Street to 7160 W. 14 Rd. in Mesick, Michigan, a rural community known locally as Glengary. I was about to turn nine years old. The sprawling five-bedroom, two-story house stood weathered against the Michigan landscape, its painted white, wood panel siding peeling slightly at the corners and a wide front porch that creaked under every footstep. This imposing structure with its maze of rooms and hidden corners would become the setting for a formative chapter in my childhood.
   My family had recently moved from Bebee, Arkansas, following the birth of my baby brother Adam in 1983, though I never fully understood the reasons behind our southern & northern migrations. Despite my small stature, slender frame, and bright blond hair, my quiet demeanor masked an inquisitive mind and creative spirit. Though physically unassuming and reserved, my curiosity and artistic nature ran deep beneath the shy exterior. I was eager to learn, read, and absorb everything around me, characteristics that would serve me well after my early academic struggles.
   My academic journey had faced early hurdles. During my first attempt at second grade at Mesick Elementary, I struggled significantly with reading comprehension, which ultimately led to me failing the grade. That pivotal summer in Sherman Township, my great-grandmother—a stern woman with gentle hands and reading glasses that hung from a chain around her neck—dedicated herself to improving my reading skills. She sat beside me for hours on her bright orange & brown floral-patterned sofa while I sounded out words from dog-eared copies of children’s classics & comic books. Her patience and persistence transformed my abilities completely. When I returned to Mesick Elementary to repeat second grade, I had jumped from a level 3 reader to a level 10, a remarkable improvement that changed my entire educational experience.
   This newfound literacy opened worlds to me. I devoured books about Billy the Kid, Al Capone, and Jesse James, fascinated by these larger-than-life outlaws. Hans Christian Andersen’s fairy tales transported me to magical realms, while “James and the Giant Peach” quickly became my favorite story. Comics—Superman, Spider-Man, The Archies, Garfield, Marmaduke, Blondie & Dagwood, Calvin & Hobbes and Charlie Brown—filled my shelves alongside how-to-draw manuals that fed my artistic aspirations. This voracious reading habit became a cornerstone of my identity, transforming me from a struggling student into a confident learner.
   It was during this second attempt at second grade that I formed bonds with the class of ’96, who would become what I would call my soulmates. The classroom smelled of chalk dust, carpet cleaner and floor polish, with motivational posters adorning walls beneath fluorescent lights that hummed throughout the day. My small circle of friends reflected the diverse backgrounds that enriched my young life: Matt, the minister’s son who had just moved from Boston and previously attended a Christian school; Jacob, a Korean classmate whose impressive car drawings inspired my own automotive sketches; Joey and Bob, hometown friends from Mesick whose families had lived there for generations; and a particularly memorable red-headed girl named Julie, whose freckles seemed to dance when she laughed. During recess, when not stationed on the rusted metal swings or monkey bars that left orange stains on my palms, I would chase Julie across the playground’s ever-changing terrain—grassy in early fall, covered in winter snow, muddy in spring, and a mixture of sand, gravel, and black dirt through the off-winter times. I never quite matched her speed as her copper hair streamed behind her like a flag in the wind.
   Home life revolved around simple pleasures and distinct family dynamics. My mother was the heart of our household kitchen, crafting the best brownies, cheeseburgers, french fries, and homemade mashed potatoes I’ve ever tasted. The aroma of her cooking would fill the house, drawing us in from outdoor play like a siren’s call. When not cooking, she could usually be found knitting or absorbed in a Stephen King novel, the pages turning late into the night. Casey Kasem & Paul Harvey became voices I recognized immediately. Mom and Dad’s records sounded through the house because the radio was always on unless it was TV time. Dad had the radio playing during his entire routine before work. Bands like Wham!, Foreigner, Daryl Hall & John Oates, Tears for Fears, a-ha, REO Speedwagon, Glenn Frey, ZZ Top, and so many other artists filled our house’s atmosphere. At this point, I knew more bands existed than the three that had ruled my kindergarten world.
   My father remained somewhat elusive during this period, working long hours—possibly night shifts—that kept him absent from many of my memories of this house. On the rare occasions he was home, he’d often sit sketching robots and Transformers with pencil and pen, chain smoking his cigarettes & drinking coffee, his artistic talent inspiring my own drawing practice. My brother Keith—younger by two years and perpetually following in my footsteps—and I channeled our creativity into elaborate projects during those long summer days that seemed to stretch endlessly. Despite his age, Keith was an eager participant in my schemes, often bringing fresh perspectives to our adventures. We crafted makeshift parachutes for GI Joe figures using plastic sandwich bags and yarn salvaged from my mother’s knitting basket, testing them by dropping them from the uppermost branches of the maple tree in our yard. We constructed ziplines using kite string stretched taut between the porch railing and distant fence posts, sending plastic action figures hurtling through the air while we provided sound effects with our own voices.
   Television provided both entertainment and inspiration in our household, the cathode ray tube casting a bluish glow across our living room carpet during evening hours. Bob Ross’s painting shows sparked another influence in my artistic journey, his soothing voice guiding me through the creation of “happy little trees” and mountains that I attempted to recreate in my notebooks. I spent hours practicing his techniques, drawing landscapes, cabins, and nature scenes with margins filled with doodles. Like many children of the mid-1980s, I immersed myself in the world of He-Man, arranging epic battles between plastic figures on my bedroom & the livingroom floors, while my family gathered for episodes of “Three’s Company” and “The Cosby Show,” the laughter from the laugh tracks echoing through our home on weeknight evenings. Other sitcoms included: Cheers, Family Ties, Who’s the Boss, Night Court, Growing Pains, 227 & The Facts of Life. Our TV viewing also included dramas and action shows: The A-Team, Simon & Simon (later became the names of two pitbulls I had in 2008, both dogs, brothers both named Simon), Highway to Heaven, Dallas, Magnum P.I., and old reruns of Hill Street Blues.
   Friday evenings followed a distinct pattern in our household: Miami Vice—which my parents watched while I pretended not to notice the more adult content—gave way to Alfred Hitchcock Presents and Tales from the Darkside, shows that simultaneously terrified and fascinated me. The eerie introduction music of Tales from the Darkside with its inverted imagery would send shivers down my spine even before the stories began. These programs introduced me to the connection between literature and visual media, as I recognized Stephen King’s credits & influence on many episodes—the same author whose dog-eared paperbacks with their lurid covers filled my mother’s collection on the living room bookshelf. After one particularly frightening episode left me terrified of my bedroom telephone, my mother warned that if I couldn’t handle my fears, I’d lose my privilege to watch these shows. Rather than give up these thrilling programs, I began hiding my fears, swallowing my terror and learning to mask my reactions—an early lesson in emotional concealment.
   Winter in northern Michigan initiated me into new experiences as snow blanketed our property in pristine white drifts that sometimes reached the windowsills. During weekend stays with a friend whose family had embraced the northern Michigan lifestyle completely, I learned to operate a snowmobile under his father’s patient guidance. The powerful machine vibrated beneath me as we carved paths through snow-covered fields, the cold air stinging my cheeks as I gradually gained confidence at the controls.
   The same family that introduced me to snowmobiling also took me on my first ice fishing expedition on the frozen Manistee River—a waterway that carried painful memories for our family, as my mother’s twenty-year-old brother had drowned there in the summer of 1980. Sitting in a shanty with my friend and his father, watching the small propane heater cast an orange glow across our faces, I experienced the peculiar stillness of winter fishing. The magical moment when a perch or pike emerge from the circular hole cut into the ice seemed almost miraculous, this sign of life pulled from beneath the frozen surface of a river I knew held both beauty and danger.
   When spring arrived and the snow melted, this same friend’s family introduced me to driving a three-wheeler, which presented an entirely different challenge. I struggled with the complex coordination required to shift gears while maintaining balance on the unstable machine. During one of my early attempts, I lost control on a turn, and the three-wheeler caught my leg, pulling me underneath it. Though I escaped with only a small bruise on my lower leg, the incident taught me a valuable lesson about respect for these powerful machines. Despite this mishap, I was back on the three-wheeler as soon as the soreness subsided, determined to master this new skill.
   Behind our house stood an old barn that Keith and I were strictly forbidden to enter. The one time I ventured inside—driven by necessity when one of our parachuting action figures had drifted through a window—I discovered an unusual sight: rows upon rows of plants hanging upside down from the ceiling. The interior was warm and carried a peculiar, pungent odor I couldn’t identify. The abundance of these inverted plants created an almost alien landscape that both fascinated and intimidated me. I never directly asked my father about these mysterious crops, but by the middle of third grade, just before our move to Flint, Michigan, I had pieced together enough information to realize they were marijuana plants—a revelation that cast my father’s secretive activities in a completely different light.
   For Christmas, my Arkansas grandparents sent a battery-powered bumper car set that initially provided hours of entertainment as the small vehicles collided on our kitchen linoleum. Once the batteries expired and replacements proved too expensive for our family budget, the toys transitioned into bedroom décor, positioned carefully on my bookshelf along with the other battery powered toys, silent observers to the inexplicable events that followed.
   Two telephones occupied the house—one in the downstairs dining room mounted on the wall with a curly cord that had been stretched over years of use, and another in my bedroom, its black plastic housing also attached to the wall, the size of a payphone, seeming to absorb rather than reflect the dim light. After viewing a particularly disturbing Tales from the Darkside episode featuring a murderous telephone that rang despite being disconnected, my bedroom phone transformed into an object of terror. Night after night, I would lie awake watching its outline with the hallway’s dim light, imagining it might ring with no caller on the line. After persistent pleading, my mother finally convinced my father to remove it, dismounting it from the wall and taking away the device that had become the focus of my nighttime fears.
   One night necessitated a bathroom visit well past midnight. When my bedside lamp with its inline switch failed—the click producing no illumination despite my repeated attempts—I attempted to navigate toward the wall switch across the room in complete darkness, my bare feet sinking into the ugly 1970s-style carpet that covered my bedroom floor. The outdated shag pile, a relic from a bygone era that previous owners had never updated, cushioned my steps as I moved cautiously forward. Inexplicably, I collided with a solid barrier where no wall should have existed, the impact sending me stumbling backward onto the floor. Disoriented and frightened, I felt along all four walls and what should have been open space, discovering myself apparently enclosed in a doorless room—reminiscent of an Alfred Hitchcock plot about a man waking up inside a coffin buried deep beneath the earth, had seeped into reality. Desperate and unable to locate the door that had been there when I went to bed, I retreated to the only window in my bedroom, which was located right beside my bed. I pushed it open to the bitter winter air, relieved myself outside into the snow on our front porch below, and returned to bed still confused and trembling beneath my blanket. By morning, the room had returned to its normal configuration—the doorway accessible, the light switch functional, and no evidence of the previous night’s architectural impossibility.
   I told my parents about this terrifying experience, but they dismissed it without much thought. Years later, I developed a theory that perhaps on a night when my parents had gone out, leaving us children home alone, someone had deliberately blocked the pathway to prevent me from leaving my room. Though they’ve always denied this, I remain convinced of what I experienced—wide awake, in complete darkness, in a room without exit. It couldn’t have been a dream; the memory remains too vivid, too tangible, too real.
   These incidents convinced my young mind that supernatural forces inhabited our home—a sentient structure capable of rearranging itself when darkness fell, playing tricks on its occupants for reasons I couldn’t begin to understand at eight years old. By the time we moved from this house in 1986, I had accumulated a collection of experiences that would shape my perception of reality and possibility for years to come.
   Our next home would be 6050 Glengary Road, still in Mesick—a true log cabin known as “Bottomly’s Cabin.” We rented from Mr. Bottomly, who was serving time in Michigan State Corrections for distribution of marijuana. Ironically, I knew this cabin because it was the home of my babysitter Jody the summer before. She had dated Mr. Bottomly during the time she looked after me and my brothers, Keith and Adam, along with her own two children, Billy and Heather. This was while my mother worked as a waitress at “Jan’s” restaurant, it could have been called “Mushroom Cap” because the old Hotel still was standing when mom started working there, leading to its destruction in 1986 or 1987. My father worked at Cherry Pickers of Traverse City. But the stories of that log cabin—with its own mysteries and memories—belong to another chapter entirely.