Oh do you know the Carpet Man? Or Mildred?

Every so often (very infrequently in our case) you let a complete stranger into your house. We are about to let a complete stranger come into our bedroom on Monday. His name is Ernie and we will pay him to come install a piece of carpet on the floor.

For this guy we will muscle three large pieces of furniture into another room and move a ton of this and that to somewhere else so that he can get to the floor. I will get down on my hands and knees and struggle with a utility knive and my hands to strip off the harvest gold carpeting that has been on the floor there since who knows when-- long before we moved here. Lots of history embedded in that yukky old thing.

Mildred. She was the maiden lady whose death put this house on the market. She was a good neighbor, according to the folks next door who have lived there since the 50's. That means they knew Mildred as a young person-- she was not that old when she died-- in her 60's I think. Her parents built this house when they were first married and it was here that Mildred spent her whole life.

We "run into" Mildred often as we live in her house-- not exactly like a ghost (though we kid about that sometimes.) Signs of her pop up in surprising places, such as under the wallpaper we stripped off the dining room walls. "Damn you, Mildred W…." says pencilled writing uncovered by removing the old sunflower printed stuff. Someone installing that wallpaper was at least irritated, if not really irate at Mildred. I wonder when that job was done? Was it while her mother was still living here?

We see in an upstairs room where there was a crucifix hanging on the wall, keeping the wallpaper from fading where it hung for so long. Some old scotch tape marks, probably from photos stuck up on the wall. And marks on the wall where someone habitually sat, bumping knee or elbow against the paper.

The kitchen is full of "evidence": handy hooks hanging in strategic places and a corner where the plaster bears the marks of a cute little hanging shelf. The pantry is probably being used very much as Mildred used it, colanders hanging from nails pounded into the wooden shelf supports and rows of canned goods and tinned staples lined up on the shelves. Surely she had a small step ladder like mine to reach the top shelves.

We found ant traps in the basement, and the rainy weather clothesline strung back and forth near the furnace. The concrete floor has traces of coal soot from back in the very old days before they switched to oil heat. The rafter joists where the ceiling meets the wall are "insulated" with vintage newspapers. Worth reading!!

I think we speak of Mildred most often when we're in the woods. We have treated with respect a place behind the shed where she had placed plastic flowers in a sort of memorial. Some pet maybe, or …what? Bottles and jars come up out of the ground I dig for flower beds and there are bones of something large that turn up now and then. I always assume it's a deer, or beef bone. Surely they didn't bury a person back there!!! And bunches of daffodils come up in surprising places in the spring-- fragrant ones. She obviously loved her woods and spent some good hours back there.

We were told that shortly before Mildred died she ran across the street to help the woman who lived there who had fallen in her driveway. That woman died. Then Mildred died. Then another woman two houses away died too. All of these women were only in their sixties and had lived on our street for most if not all their lives.

So we bought one of three houses. Young families bought the other two and they are full of new babies and little children and toys and birthday parties and activities. Ours is mostly quiet and it might surprise Mildred if she came back today that there are still so many corners familiar to her-- corners her father built and which we enjoy and will not change.

But the carpet has to go. By Monday!

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