When bedrooms were smaller

The "old house" as we called it, on Brookwood Road, was a whopping 1,350 square feet with an unfinished basement big enough for my brothers and me to play around in. That house was built in 1958, the year my parents were married. It was a nice brick home with central air conditioning, which was kind of a luxury. Central air was a trendy post World War suburban thing, but we lived on my grandfather's hog farm - 20 two-lane roundtrip miles from the county seat of only about 2,000 people.
The Brookwood Road house
Drawing by Christy Jeffcoat
We had a big yard - so big my brother Tim and I had to cut it in pushmower shifts over the course of an entire Saturday. Small house and big yard because most of a family's time was not spent indoors.

In 2014, the average US home was built at about 2,600 square feet. The average size of a home built in 1973 was 1,600.

But, the real difference in homes "then" and homes "now" tells us a lot about our culture today.

The bedrooms "then" were much smaller and the family rooms "then" were much bigger. You went to your bedroom, often shared with other siblings, to sleep. You did homework at the kitchen table. You all gathered together in the family room to play Monopoly, or watch television, or yell at each other. Sometimes all that happened at the same time.

Today, bedrooms are small apartments and everyone in the family has their own. It's possible for a young person to come home, disappear, and not be seen or heard from again until the next day. Family members watch television independent of one another, and they eat in front of those televisions. We all know better, but it's the reality.

Families were closer, I think, when homes were smaller and more space was shared. In that house on Brookwood Road, if someone had the stomach virus everyone knew it because everyone heard it. And, everyone ended up having it, too, because we generally shared the same bathroom in the center of the house. We were family - not just strangers living together. There's a big difference.

In full disclosure, when I was a freshman in high school (1973) our family moved from Brookwood Road to Hickory Trail in a nice new larger home where we boys each had our own bedroom until our sister was born. When she came along (1974), my two younger brothers moved in with one another. When I left for college, my youngest brother got my room. I bunked with my middle brother when I came home from college.

While I enjoyed those four high school years of privacy in my own room, some of my best and greatest memories came when I shared a bedroom with one - and for a short time on Brookwood Road - both of my brothers. We didn't know it then but that's where the brotherhood that binds us 50 years later was woven. You can't underestimate the power of shared space, especially among siblings.

One of the blessings of writing Brookwood Road was becoming friends with Christy Jeffcoat, who was the manager of the Humpus Bumpus Bookstore in my hometown of Cumming, GA. Christy is a great artist. She took a collection of photographs of the "old house" and completed a pencil drawing of that house. She graciously gave me that drawing as a gift and I have it framed in my office today. I treasure it so much and often find myself staring at. (Check out Christy's website here).

That drawing reminds me daily of the small bedrooms and the large family rooms. I was blessed to grow up in it. I was blessed to call it home. It inspired me - and Vicki - to raise our four boys in an environment of shared bedrooms, which I believe contributes to their strong brotherhood today as men.

Ironically, today, that house on Brookwood Road is gone. It's replaced by magnificent, giant, modern houses. Today, I don't go to Brookwood Road and lament what was or criticize what is, but I do cherish and appreciate where I came from and what it taught me about family.

*****
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