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One time, however, when we were kids, a friend and I found ourselves trespassing when the owner was very much at home.
This friend was Brent Holland, probably the best friend I had growing up in Orange, Texas. This was in the days when kids could hop on bikes and explore their world - be it in the woods, around town, or even short forays out of town if we had the time and stamina to do it on our bikes. And that we did as often as possible. The only concern was that we return home by a time specified by our parents.
One of our favorite activities in those days was finding a house that was full of stuff but vacated by whoever lived there. This allowed us to break in somehow, usually through a window, and look around. The best houses were the ones left completely untouched, with all furniture and household goods in place as if the owners just upped and left. We discovered one house, on Cypress Street, that had the table still set for dinner and dried out coffee in the pot on the counter. A girl's bedroom was upstairs with unfinished homework on her desk, pencil left beside the paper that had made the last marks. This was a remarkable find, as the paper was dated 1958, the year I was born. This means the family had to skedaddle thirteen years before. What was the cause of this...why did the family have to leave in such a rush, leaving everything in its place? We enjoyed imagining the circumstances surrounding their sudden departure, guessing that it must've been something about money.
Our MO in finding a potential house to explore was to pull up on our bicycles and knock on the door to see if anyone was at home. If someone came to the door we pretended to be paper carriers for the Orange Leader, the local paper, and would they like a subscription? If no one answered, and if upon closer inspection we determined that the house was indeed vacant and still full of the previous owner's possessions, we circled the house looking for an entry point. Of course we were prudent about this, behaving nonchalantly enough to avoid suspicion from neighbors or anyone passing by. Finally, if the coast was clear and we were able to open a window - usually in the back of the house, from an inside porch was best - we lifted it and crawled through. We never broke a window or lock; if a nondestructive way to get in was not available we moved on to another adolescent activity for the day. In this manner we were successful in exploring four or five such houses there in Orange, never getting caught or hauled in for trespassing.
One day a house on Pine Street grabbed our attention as a potential exploration opportunity. Of all the houses we'd broken into, this was by far the creepiest. It was a two-story clapboard surrounded by tall water oak trees, the limbs of which extended well above the high roof line, darkening the house and yard with ominous shadows. From the street we could see that some of the rooms on the second floor were dilapidated to the point of collapsing in places. Hmmm...a very interesting prospect. But was it really vacant? Oddly, there was an old tan Camaro parked in front. Could somebody really live in this place? As per usual, we parked our bikes in the front yard, approached, and knocked on the old, paint-chipped door. After waiting a minute we knocked again, this time a little louder. When there was still no answer we peered into a window, and it clearly looked as if nobody had been there in a very long time. Next we circled the house, discovering more rooms rimming the second floor that were in a similar state of dilapidation to what we'd seen from the front. The car parked in front still caused us to hesitate, but we concluded that a neighbor was simply using the space. So we considered all the signs that we'd seen - the rundown condition of the house, the unkempt yard with those big trees that hadn't been trimmed, the appearance of vacancy, and the lack of an answer at the door - as a green light to go ahead and explore inside. We parked our bikes in some bushes, opened a kitchen window in the back of the place, and crawled through.
We made our way cautiously through the kitchen and saw that this one was something special, probably the best old house we'd yet explored. The entire place was furnished, yet most of the furniture in the front and living spaces were covered in old sheets. And I kid you not, there were cobwebs in the corners of the rooms, rendering a spooky, haunted feel. We wandered through quietly, speaking to one another in hushed tones about the things we'd see in this or that room. There was a desk; we opened the drawers and shuffled through old papers trying to piece together a picture of past occupation, when there was life within the walls of these dank, dusty rooms. Even an old organ. What a bonanza!
To our left as we approached the front of the house was a broad staircase that curved to the left. How could we not go up and explore what it leads to...if downstairs was so interesting, what awaits us up there? Together we began to ascend those steps, several of which creaked and groaned as we placed our weight on them. We tried to do this quietly, not wanting to alert a neighbor or passer-by of our presence. For this reason Brent went ahead of me, diminishing the noise made by our combined weight. Thus he reached the top first and had made his way some distance down a hallway by the time I stepped fully onto the upper floor. I saw that there were a couple of doors to the left and another couple to the right of the hallway. Surely these must lead to some of those dilapidated rooms we saw from the outside. Halfway through to the right there was a small cabinet with some pictures on top that Brent was examining, and a dresser to the immediate left that looked interesting to me. I was reaching down to open one of the drawers when something caught my eye that froze my heart.
Not six inches from my foot I saw a LIGHT ON under the first door to my left. A light was on in that room! Brent wanted to show me something he'd found but I had to hush him so that I could listen. Drawing my ear to within an inch of the door, being very careful not to touch it, I heard a TV going inside. Brent was a little miffed that I'd hushed him, but he understood instantly when I motioned him over and pointed to the light shining from under that door. For a moment I stood rooted to the spot, petrified that whoever was in there would have to go to the bathroom, or decide to get a snack, and emerge to see two teenage boys standing there in the hallway.
Wow, what to do now? It was obvious, really, that we needed to somehow get out of that house as quickly and quietly as possible. Remembering the creakiness of the steps, we softly but quickly descended the broad, winding staircase, made our way back to the kitchen, and closed the window through which we'd entered as quietly as possible after crawling through. Retrieving our bicycles out of the bushes, we hopped on and rode like hell, leaving as much distance between us and that house as possible.
After a breathless mile or so we stopped to gather our thoughts. The close call and exertion left me exhilarated but shaking. There was somebody in there that belonged to the Camaro after all! After settling down a few minutes, we decided to head back to that house and find out who was in there after all. As nonchalantly as we could, we rode up the driveway, parked next to the car, but this time banged on the door so that whoever was in that upstairs room would hear us. Sure enough, after we'd banged on that door a second or third time a big, burly guy with mustache and five-o-clock shadow opens the door, glaring at these kids who'd interrupted his solitude.
"Would you like to subscribe to the Orange Leader, sir?" "Are you kidding? Don't think so," he replied, shutting the door hard in our faces. We left still shaken but very, very relieved to have escaped what we now knew would have been a terrible fate if discovered in the wrong place at the wrong time. Getting back on our bikes we looked back at the house with a fresh perspective, but wondering how anyone could live in such a dilapidated structure. The outside rooms upstairs were literally falling apart, so the room he was in had to have been completely interior, with no window facing to the outside. We concluded he must have inherited it or acquired it through similar means, because who else would live in a house that literally was falling down around him? Never before or since during our childhood did we see anything else like it.
So did we learn a lesson from this, perhaps to avoid these break-in explorations in the future? You must be kidding! On the contrary, we were emboldened. More stories like this to follow...
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