701 W Pecan

(This is a history blog for future generations!)

Before I was two years old my grandparents, Caskey and Ruth Livingston, moved from Comanche, Texas, where they had only lived a few years, back to Coleman, Texas where they had lived most of their lives. Coleman is where my mom and aunt grew up. It is where my grandfather lived as a small boy. It's where my grandparents owned a grain and feed store and my grandfather served on the school board for many years. It's where my parents were married. Moving back was "moving back home."

They bought a 100 year old house that came to rest on 701 Pecan street after having recently been moved in town from the country. They totally gutted and re-did the entire house in a modern 70's way! (green linoleum and green countertops in the kitchen, paneling in the living room etc) It is the only house I ever remember them living in. Every square inch of that house is filled with some sort of memory. From my earliest memory ( I snuck out during nap time and walked to this house from my great-grandparents house two blocks away at age two and scared everyone to death!) to the first and last time I brought Kolby to Coleman as a baby/toddler...We had 30 years of memories in that house!

Some how, in the 30 years of visiting Coleman, we started an unofficial tradition of taking pictures on the steps of the front porch. My mom's scrapbooks are dotted with dozens of pictures of my cousins, my sister and me standing outside on the front steps of 701 W Pecan. We didn't even realize we did this for years and years! But if I were to go back and dig, I could probably find pictures on those steps from every year of my life up until the day our family sold the house in June 2000. Here are a few examples...

My cousins Ashley, Robby & Me and Puffy. I was probably 6 or 7 here. This is back when there were just the three of us.

Eight years, and 3 more cousins later, all the grandkids are joined by Mom, Sue, Nana & Grandaddy. I think this was taken on a Sunday afternoon just before we loaded up to head home. We met in Coleman several weekends a year just to do it. Most holidays were spent here too!

I think this picture is from April 1995. All the cousins Sunday after church with Nana and Grandaddy.

My Grandfather died in March 1997. The following December, my parents retired from their jobs in San Angelo (where I had lived my entire life until marriage, except college ) and moved to Coleman. Mom re-did the house again, updating and remodeling the kitchen and bathrooms, painting all the walls and sprucing up the outside of the house. 701 W Pecan was our destination for Kolby's first ever over night road trip in March of 1998. It was the first place she ever stayed over night without her mommy! 701 for Kolby was Mama K & Papa's house. For me it was always, and will always be Nana and Grandaddy's!
Papa, Sari, me, Kolby & Mama K on the steps of 701 in October 1999.

My parents lived in Coleman with my grandmother for a few years before deciding to move to Waco to be in a bigger town and to be closer to my aunt and cousins. Nana was getting a bit difficult to handle and Mom and Dad needed back-up. Nana moved with them but not with out much drama and protest. They sold the house at 701 W Pecan. We were sad to see it go in ways, but excited that my parents were moving closer to us (we were in the Keller area) and all my family in Waco. My mom and aunt always wanted to live in the same town and were finally getting their wish! It was a bittersweet time.
This was the picture I took just before leaving 701 for the last time in 2000.

Two months ago my grandmother died after a long ugly battle with dementia. We all went to Coleman one last time. I can't tell you the rush of memories that awaited my cousins and me on every street corner of that sleepy little town. Trip highlights were eating at the Dairy Queen where we always ate at least once a Coleman visit for all those years. Even a late night trip to The Shopping Basket (the only Grocery Store in town) brought back a flood of memories of shopping with Nana in better years. But my favorite part of the trip came when all of my cousins and our kids walked down the street from the funeral home to visit the house at 701W Pecan.

The lady who bought the house from my parents died a year or two ago but her kids have kept the house as a get away and gathering place. They were not home but didn't mind us looking around. We went in the back yard and showed the kids the peach tree where Sari and Amber got their first and only spanking from Grandaddy when they picked ALL the immature green peaches trying to help. I think they were 5. We showed them the spot where Robby got hit in the head and had to get stitches. While he, Ashley and I were "stoning"a wasp, little 4 year old Robby decided to retrive the rock he had just thrown and was hit in the head with one of ours. We all had a good laugh looking at the white wall on the back porch that a young Stephanie decided to spatter-paint with a bottle or two of barbecue sauce and enlisted the help of an even younger Ashley and Robby. So many stories! So many memories!

But perhaps my favorite moment came when we lined all our kids up on the front porch steps of 701 W Pecan for a late Sunday afternoon group picture. Now they share in our history. They are forever captured and immortalized on those steps!
This is one of my absolute favorite pictures! Eight little cousins sitting where some other little cousins stood not too long ago. (Seven of these eight children are the offspring of these three pictured here. Can you tell just by looking who goes with who? )

As we start to prepare for baby girl Grosz, aka cousin #9, I've thought a lot about our family and our traditions. Rob and I hope to set some new traditions and incorporate some from both our families. We've already started with our kids. Someday I would love to have a "picture place" like we had on the front porch steps of my grandparents house. One thing I know for sure, after this baby is born and old enough to travel, I hope to stop by Coleman and take a picture of my three kids on the steps of 701 W Pecan!