Our first home was a boxy 1904 two-family we bought in Coolidge Corner. Fred, a graduate student, and I, a high school teacher, were dazed by the responsibility. We had briefly rented in Ashland, where our landlord popped in whenever a fuse blew or the sink stopped up, but we loved the Coolidge Corner neighborhood — we’d be within walking distance to the library, Coolidge Corner Theatre (with its second-run movies and air-conditioning), four kosher butchers, two mom-and-pop groceries (one with a barrel filled with dill pickles), a Woolworths, and a Purity Supreme.
But we had precious little time exploring that glorious summer — we had to get the first-floor rental ready for our wonderful new tenants, Georges and Lynne. Georges was a graduate student, and Lynne was a pediatrician. It felt good to have a doctor in the house. The first floor was in good shape except for the hundreds of books the previous renters had left behind. We donated them. That was the easy part; our upstairs unit was the challenge. The owner had decorated entirely in cafeteria green: the carpeting, walls, and velvet drapes. We pulled up the thick carpet with its pattern of carved flowers and leaves, necessitating a trip to the hospital for a tetanus shot when I stepped on a carpet nail. When we pulled down the drapes, cobwebs and dust cascaded down. We looked like wigged “Poldark’’-era judges. Scarlett O’Hara would have had a ball stitching up a new gown with those drapes.
The hardest challenge was stripping the woodwork — green-painted gumwood. I stood on the couch, brushing the archway between the living and dining rooms with sticky, smelly paint stripper. Invariably, clots dripped on my bare feet, and I eventually realized I had two minutes max until my toes started burning. I made mad dashes to the bathtub. When I finally gave up, the archway was mostly au naturel, though spotted with stubborn splotches of green.
The paint was not the only tiresome remnant. The window in our room had a broken rope, so we used a block of wood on the sill to prop it open. We became friends with Tony, our indispensable handyman, who helped us fix up the screened-in back porch so that it looked like a real room. Only then would the town let us fully enclose it.
After that first summer, we had to take a pass on some repairs. Our children were born while we lived on Fuller Street, and much of our time was given up to them. They learned to crawl and walk on a smooth-enough wood floor. One day I held Jacob up to the bare front window, and he said his first word, “fidindin!’’ as a fire engine rolled down the street.
A year later we watched through that window as the Blizzard of ’78 hit the area. The oil trucks made it down the street, thanks to the backbreaking work of the neighborhood shovelers. We loved that drafty but cozy apartment, as we loved the warmth of the people and shops that made up Coolidge Corner.
Karen Mandell now lives in Needham. Her poetry collection, “Rose Has a New Walker,’’ was recently published by WordTech Communications. Send comments and a 550-word essay on your first home to Address@globe.com. Please note: We will not respond to submissions we won’t pursue.
