My Life in the Little Brown House: Addendum

Several years ago, perhaps in 1993 or 1994, there was a reunion of the five living siblings in our family in Ames, and as part of the agenda Vincent had arranged for us to see the inside of the little brown (now white) house. Some rearranging of the main floor had been done, principally to convert the dining room and the living room into one large area. This had been done by removing the partitions on either side of the archway connecting the two rooms. Other than that the house looked structurally much as it had the last time I had seen it before Mother’s passing. My main impression though was how small the rooms seemed, not at all the feeling I had growing up in it.

We weren’t invited to see the upstairs nor the basement. It would have been interesting of course to see those parts also.

This year (1997) on our trip east to visit Palma we stopped on the way back to visit Vivian in Ames, and one day during the visit we drove up to Gowrie to see the farm and the town. When we drove by the little “brown” house we noted that an attached garage had been built at the northwest corner of the house. Also it appeared that the barn had been town down — it was still standing at the time of our visit to see the inside of the house.

We also drove by the lot where grandfather Strand’s house had been standing at the time of the reunion in 1993 (4?). At that time it appeared vacant and in deteriorating condition. Now in 1997 it had disappeared as had also the chicken house which I seem to recall was still standing in 1993. Somehow the lot seemed much smaller with it gone.