Precious Memories - How They Linger

As some of you know, I've lived in Chester all but about a year of my life. For most of those years, I've lived within just a few blocks of the building in which I was born, the old Chester Hospital on George Street. One of the houses where we lived when I was a young girl, maybe ages five to eight, was at 908 George Street, where the Randolph County Housing Authority office now sits.
During those years, of course, the Gwin apartment building was not yet built, nor was the family housing behind it. A beautiful old two story white house sat where the Gwin Apartments are now, facing Opdyke Street. The house had a long and wide front porch with a swing and rocking chairs. As my sister, Charmaine, and I would roller skate up and down the sidewalk on Opdyke, two lovely elderly women would often be sitting on the porch and they would wave their handkerchiefs at us. We loved that and and would always wave back, but sadly we never talked to them. Wish we had. They wore their hair in little "buns" on top of their heads. I believe that this house was known as the Howorth house But please, if any of my readers know differently, let me know --- correct me.

Directly across the street from our home on George Street was what we and others came to know as the "old McKenzie house". The local lore on this house is much more interesting. It was a three story brick home (including attic) with 'grounds' around it....not a yard, but 'grounds', if you know what I mean. The grounds were always very overgrown. No one cared for this property. By the time we moved to George Street, the McKenzie house had been deserted for decades and it was very dilapidated. Crumbling actually. I was sure it was haunted and tried not to look directly at it when I'd walk up and down the street. But at the same time I was very curious about the old place. We would see teenagers coming in and out of the house after dark sometimes and that made Charmaine and me even more curious. It made my mother furious. We nagged and nagged our mother until, on a couple of occasions, she caved in and actually took us in to the house to look around. The doors were always unlocked. We were not allowed to touch anything. Mother said it was disrespectful, even if no one lived there anymore.

It was amazing! Furniture still remained in place in every room on the first and second floors ... antique furniture THEN and that was the fifties! I clearly recall being fascinated by an old library table in one of the parlors that had a fringed satin pillow on it that read "Mother". Dishes were in the kitchen and beds in the bedrooms. In one bedroom upstairs I remember an old wooden wardrobe with silk smoking jackets hanging inside. The imaginations of two little girls ran wild! We did not go to the attic or to the basement, but I remember that the basement windows had iron bars on them. In the back of the property was a small brick building that also had iron bars at the windows. Through the windows of this little building we could see a mortar and pestle on a table. Well, he WAS a doctor. I know that Dr. McKenzie's office actually sat at the corner of Stacey and State Streets.

Mother didn't let us go back to the house for a couple of years and when we did go, it was devastating. There was almost nothing left and what was left was broken, destroyed, strewn around the house. Charmaine and I cried and Mother had to explain that people had come in and stolen and damaged property that did not belong to them. It was a hard lesson for two young girls.

In the late 1800s and early 1900s Dr. W.R. and Mrs. McKenzie lived in the house on George Street with their three children, Adeline, William and Robert. I don't know and so wish I did know what happened to any of them. Of course there were all kinds of spooky stories about the family's outcome and about why the house sat empty of people and yet full of belongings. As an adult, I imagine that the reasons were probably more mundane than the spooky stories we all had heard. I do know that Adeline married and that her married name was Gant, but that's all I know. The house was eventually taken down and the current housing was built in its place.

I know that though I could not have put it into words then - as a child - as an adult I can look back and say that it seemed as though the house had an actual heartbeat, as though it breathed. I wish I could see it one more time and that I could walk those wonderful old grounds again. They had an ancient scent, sort of like you smell when you walk through a very old and undisturbed forest.

And I know something else. Shame on anyone who went into that house all those years ago and stole and destroyed that old mansion with its wonderful history!

If I sit on my front porch now I can almost imagine those sweet little old women across the street on the porch of the Howorth house, waving their handkerchiefs and smiling at me - all grown up now and nearly an old woman myself!!! (smile) Ahhhh, the passage of time brings sweet, precious memories to us all, does it not? See you on the porch!