The Room on West Oak

The room was nestled at the end of the hall on the second story of a one hundred year old house with high ceilings and cast iron radiators that rattled and pinged through cold winter nights.  It was smallish but the closet was largish and there was a tall window that overlooked the wide front porch roof.  The house itself sat on the venerable north side of West Oak Street.

It was the summer of ‘85 and I was between my sophomore and junior years of High School.  It was a new town for me yet only about five miles from my old town where I’d lived from first through tenth grade.  Much of that summer was spent in anticipation of moving and getting the house ready to move into.  The personality of the place had me utterly captivated.

And this room was mine.  I stood in the middle of it and summed up the possibilities.  First off I removed the door to the closet to make it seem more spacious.  I had a desk that was not going to fit in the room proper, so the closet became my office with barely enough room to get the chair in there along with my thin frame and no room to spare.

My parents gave me carte blanche and I ran with it.  I claimed an old oak chifforobe my Dad had bought at an estate sale in order to have a place for my clothes.  I chose the carpet and bedding to match, but what tied it all together was installing a beautiful wall-sized mural of a Fall forest path scene that further extended the perceived size of the room.

A large wooden entertainment system finished out the room’s furnishings which included my Dad’s old record-eight track player combo with speakers.  The rest of it was packed full with my Science Fiction and Fantasy books (along with a sizable number of Stephen King novels) all of which comprised my most valued of possessions: a personal library.

Interesting thing about that record player.  I didn’t really have any records of my own, though there were a few eight tracks of my Dad’s that I liked.  I acquired records* when the most beautiful girl at my new school turned around in her seat, batted her eyelashes, and asked if I wanted to help her out by buying some records for their senior fundraiser.

After we moved into this house and my room had been completely transformed by my ecstatic vision, my parents threw an Open House party.  My Dad had sunk a chunk of change into beautifying this grand old home, but at the end of the day I was told by more than one adult who’d had the tour that my room was their favorite part of the whole house.

It turned into a money pit and my Dad sold it when I was in college.  And since then, like a skipping record,  there are the dreams.  It is always a house that can only be described as a mansion.  The rooms are large and limitless with hidden wings and grand ballrooms, though it is rundown and needs work.  Invariably my joy becomes tempered by the thought “I can’t afford this”... and I wake up.

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*Sting’s “Dream of the Blue Turtles” and Billy Joel’s “Greatest Hits Volume I & II”