There's nothing left to take
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When Johnny and June Carter Cash's home burned down a couple of days ago, I immediately thought of Rosanne Cash's "House on the Lake" from last year's Black Cadillac. It's really a sad story about the house; they bought it in the 1960s and lived there until they both died in 2003. I recently returned to the house in which I grew up, from age 5 to 19. My daughter received a birthday invitation from one of her friends and the address was my old address. It was really freaky. I took her to the party and went through the place. Believe in ghosts or not, I felt a presence in my old room, sensing a younger me there, listening to Q104, or one of my personal 8-track mix tapes. I think I was one of 17 people who actually recorded his own 8-tracks. It was a real pain in the ass because the track would invariably change in the middle of a song, totally blowing the vibe I had worked so hard to craft.Except for my room, the rest of the house was unrecognizable to me, having been updated many times in the past 20 years since I left it. We've lived in the house we own now for five years or so, four of our kids were born since we moved in. We discovered evidence of former families here, their hands in cement, their heights recorded on a door jamb. I'm told the father drives by every month or so because he misses the place. A crispy yellow newspaper column describes how when they tore down my grandmother's house in Richmond, Missouri you could hear piano playing coming from the wreckage at night. A musical lament for memories lost. How sad I'd be if my old house had burned down, or if this place goes after we leave it. But as Rosanne says, contemplating the home she emptied after the passing of her parents, "love and years are not for sale." They don't stay with the place. That presence stays with you; it's for you to preserve.
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