My grandparents Scott and Kathleen Hollyfield lived at 705 Hill Road, Houston, in the Aldine area, an old-timey country-ish area north of downtown. We lived across town on Chatterton Drive, over to the west of downtown in a new housing development called Spring Branch.
My grandaddy picked us up on Chatterton in his old Studebaker (the type with the rocket-nose front) and chugged south on Shadowdale Drive down to the Katy Freeway, or Interstate 10 as it is officially known. We headed east, then just north of downtown we connected to the North Freeway (Interstate 45) via a grand cement mixmaster-style intersection, and headed up north. We exited at Little York Road and headed east, shortly thereafter connecting with Airline Drive, where we took a left and headed north again. Nowadays Airline Drive seems to consist of almost nothing except auto supply stores, but I remember it as being rather more varied. The service station where grandaddy took his Studebaker is (almost unbelievably) still there, although it’s a used tire joint now.
We took a right on Hill Road where the Aldine Funeral Chapel stood (and still stands.) Then we headed east on Hill Road, wending our way to the 700 block. Hill Road was then (and now) a mix of little country houses, dusty lots filled with cars and machinery, and the occasional grand house surrounded by trees and fenced in tightly.
Eventually we arrived at 705, to our left about halfway along Hill Road before it ended at Hardy Road. A shallow ditch ran along the side of the road and therefore driveways on Hill Road required a small culvert. My grandparents’ square house stood squarely in the center of its square lot. To the left was the driveway, lined by a chain-link fence and old trees. Immediately to the left of that driveway was a narrow dirt path that led to the five-acre plot of land to the rear, also my grandparents’ property but sitting unused during my childhood. The house to the left was a grander affair, grayish-white with two attic gable windows and a fountain in the front.
My grandparents’ house had been covered originally in white clapboard, but when I was still very little they had a creative crazy fit and had shingle-shaped pink siding installed. The wooden trim was painted pink as well, so the house looked like a cube of bubble gum sitting on a green felt table. A giant dark magnolia and a fleecy Persian silk tree (we called it, incorrectly, a "mimosa") punctuated the front lawn. Honeysuckles and other creeping plants masked the severity of the front chain-link fence, while a stand of cottonwood trees marked the north edge of the property. It was a small lot but looked spacious because the house itself was so demure, a tiny two-bedroom affair raised on cinderblocks (this is hurricane country, remember) and expanded slightly via a small addition in the back.
The property buzzed incessantly with a particular shimmer that I always associate with Hill Road, although there is nothing particularly unique about the sound itself. Houston is subtropical, a place where insects outnumber humans by something like 100 gazillion to one, and that shimmering accompagnato was caused by cicadas and various other crawly-flying things that lived in the surrounding trees. The property also had a particular scent, a mix of hot wet earth, honeysuckles, mold, and roses, that I have never smelled anywhere else.
The driveway extended past the house on the left and terminated in a rickety wasp-filled garage where grandaddy always parked the Studebaker. Where the driveway passed the south side of the house a carport sheltered parked cars from the blistering Houston sun. From the carport, three cement stairs led to the kitchen door, really the only entrance anybody ever used except for formal-type guests, who arrived via the front door.
The kitchen was minuscule enough to feel crowded with two people. It was my grandaddy’s bailiwick. My grandmother worked in a Houston hospital and had never learned how to boil water without burning it or herself. Grandaddy wasn’t much better but at least he was good at making an old-fashioned southern-type breakfast, eggs fried in the bacon grease, the whole served with buttered toast and lots of coffee. Both my sister and I considered that to be a rare treat, given that my mother was not a breakfast person herself and thus at home we usually started the day with cold cereal.
The kitchen opened onto two rooms—to the right a cramped dinette that could seat six in a pinch, its window looking onto the front lawn, and the living room straight on past the kitchen. When I was little the living room was a somber gray place with bristly, smelly jute curtains. Eventually my grandmother went on a redecorating kick and the room lightened up immensely, acquiring walnut panelling, white carpet, and far less grim furniture. But her pride and joy, the china closet, always anchored the room. Shaped like an upright half-cylinder, it featured three curving panes of glass, the center of which was the door. A half-dozen half-circle wooden shelves contained an eye-popping variety of items, ranging from hand-painted china to 19th-century pieces of glassware to family doodads. I was particularly partial to a set of salt dishes with tiny sterling silver spoons, so my grandmother made sure to place those on a lower shelf so I could see them.
To the left the living room opened onto the family room, actually a back porch that had been enclosed. Panelled in a rosy-orange wood, with a linoleum floor, it was the true living room. Comfortable and indestructible vinyl chairs with bamboo arms and legs, two big easy chairs for my grandparents, the television, soft rugs on the floor, made it a great place to hang out. My grandmother loved collecting fostoria bottles and they lined one side of the room. She also had an interest in modernistic art (how that came about I’ll never know) and thus the walls were festooned with hideous, Rorschach-y bloopy pen-and-ink drawings.
A small guest room adjoined the family room; this was the room where my sister and I stayed when in residence. Through that bedroom, to the right, one found a three-step-long hallway opening onto a second bathroom (my grandaddy’s) and terminating in the master bedroom, in the front of the house. We didn’t spend much time in there, of course, since that was our grandparents’ hideaway.
Cramped though it was, 705 Hill Road was the venue for almost every family occasion—Christmas and Easter, birthdays and holidays. My sister and I spent a lot of weekends there. I loved it as my real home, rather than the sterile suburban tract house on Chatterton Drive. It was just a rickety little old house, built probably during the 1920s in what was then the outskirts of the city. The average person passing by wouldn’t have given it a second glance, just another clapboard box amongst many, perhaps a bit tidier than some.
Hill Road hasn’t changed all that much, to my surprise. The boxy clapboard houses remain more or less as they were. The trees, the ditch beside the road, they’re all there. Here’s a picture of a typical Hill Road house, looking today just as ever:
A typical Hill Road house, unchanged from the past
Even the 700 block of Hill Road has survived more or less intact. In the picture below, the house at center right is the "fancy" house next door to my grandparents, with its roof gables and front-yard fountain. You can see from the shot immediately below that it sure the hell doesn’t look fancy any more.
The 700 block of HIll Road
The "fancy" next door house today—not so fancy anymore
But 705 Hill Road itself has changed dramatically, except for the lane between the two houses that leads to the acreage behind the property. It’s still there.
705 Hill Road: the dirt path to the left
But the house was partly demolished. This handsome new structure replaces the entire living room/kitchen area, but on the right side of the house my grandparents’ master bedroom has remained—it’s the part with the two 90-degree corner windows, seen most clearly in the picture above. In addition to being (apparently) a family dwelling, 705 Hill Road now hosts the Mercurio Pools Tile company. The trees flanking the front gate remain; the one in the middle is I think the old magnolia, grown gigantic, and the wintry one to its right may be the Persian silk, a.k.a. mimosa. Both are obviously old, mature trees and therefore must have been on the property before the remodel. The line of cottonwoods are gone given that the property now extends over the adjoining lot. The fence is a vast improvement on the chain-link original. And the ditch looks as though it’s almost completely grown over now.
705 Hill Road: the new house on the property
Just my luck: it’s about the only thing on the 700 block that has changed significantly from the 1950s and 1960s, drat. You really can’t go home again, I suppose. But I would like to jump down from grandaddy’s musty Studebaker just one more time, being careful to avoid getting scratched by the yellow talisman roses lining the driveway, greeting my grandparents’ dog Pretty Lady, running around the lot to make sure that all of "my" trees were still there and could be climbed (grandaddy had prepared a few of them specifically so we could climb a short ways up), being careful to avoid the places that hid wasps or icky bugs, checking out the birdbath in the backyard, and maybe drinking the sap of a few honeysuckle flowers along the fence.
I guess I’d have to settle for some swimming pool tile now.