My father’s father owned only a single home, a south Georgia farmhouse.

When bad crop years and an unpaid mortgage cost him the farm, he lost the farmhouse, too. It must have been tragic.

My father and I once found an abandoned farm house at the end of an unpaved, deeply rutted sand Georgia road he thought might have been that house.

What my grandfather endured emotionally in losing that house I can only imagine but I admire his courage.

He became a traveling engineer, contracting with south Georgia timberland owners to set up turpentine stills, teach their employees to tap the pines for sap without killing them and to cut staves and build barrels in which to ship the finished product.

Where he gained this knowledge I never knew. But he made a success of it.

MY MOTHER’S FATHER had better luck. He bought a small 2-story house and over the years, enlarged it into apartments.

He and my grandmother lived in 1 and rented the others to young couples.

He had the Midas touch with other properties he bought and rented. He would take me with him as he drove around town on Saturday mornings collecting rent money.

My father and mother owned 2 homes, the 1st they bought after World War II, the 2nd they built while I was away in Korea.

THEY LOVED both those houses. The 1st had given them a tremendous sense of pride in home ownership. The 2nd gave them a great sense of fulfillment in designing and building a home from scratch.

My father and his contractor marked the pines on the land the house and drive would occupy. The trees to be removed were marked. Any other trees the contractor cut down would cost him $1,000 each.

My father was as proud of and comfortable in that house as his successful professional practice that made it possible.

OUR BONDS WITH our homes are emotional and spiritual – more than financial assets, says psychiatrist Keith Ablow. “For those of us fortunate enough to have grown up in houses owned by our parents, they were the backdrop for our childhood memories – the places we played and hung our artwork and marked the door jam with pencil lines as we grew taller.

“For better or worse, the houses of our childhoods represent to many of us a measure of the success our parents attained, an outward expression of how hard work had paid off in comfort and safety.

“The lawn got cut. The paint got freshened, Dr. Ablow says. “When things went well, our houses grew with us”

Due to his father’s traveling work after he lost the farm, my father attended 10 schools before he was graduated.

I can appreciate what the stability of his own home meant to my father.

My wife and I have lived in more than a dozen places. All were home at one time or another because we were together.

How about your memories of home?

What do they mean to you today?

Write me at JerryBellune@yahoo.com

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