in praise of the vernacular

Prior to entering real estate, I was a total architecture snob. I couldn't imagine myself being interested in any kind of house other than an authentic & historic colonial - or a romantic Victorian, with a light & shade streaked porch & a polychrome slate roof - or possibly something in a clean looking McKim, Mead & White-ish colonial revival idiom. In other words, I yearned for something classic, pedigreed, and expressive of my values. However, life being the great teacher that it is, no sooner did I enter real estate than I found myself knee deep in ranch houses. Ranch houses. And not just any ranch houses, but ranches from the 60's and 70's, houses of that exact period & style that I'd always disdained as exemplifying the worst kind of vernacular architectural banality that there is. Yet here I suddenly was, expected not only to like them but to SELL them. Whatever, I told myself as I waded in, whatever.

Now, six months later, I'm a fan. Because what I've discovered in that time is that the ranch houses I've been dealing with provide me with something far more essential than sophistication or image - they feel like home, pure & simple. I grew up in the 60's. My friends & relatives lived in houses like these. There's a heady combination of vague smells in these house - the smell of thickish plaster & waxed hardwoods & dusty screens, of Old National Geographics & Readers Digests, smells redolent of boring Sunday afternoons & interminable family dinners - smells that seamlessly blend into the one single uber-aroma pervading my entire childhood; it's the smell of a thousand and one people, places & things I'll never see again.

So there's that. Then too, there's that hunkered down feeling of safety inherent in the low rooflines - kind of like huddling under an umbrella - that's as satisfying as playing under the dining room table on a rainy day. An attenuation in length that makes these one-story & split-levels seem more firmly entrenched in the ground, more truly dug in. Practical, no-nonsense structures, the design of which spells safety - comfort - shelter - as elemental as a house made out of wooden blocks. No doubt all these subliminal impressions are fueled by some last surviving vestigial remnant in me of childhood's most comforting illusion, the belief that hiding somewhere in the wings is a competent and sensible adult, efficiently running the whole show. Someone capable & trustworthy is in charge. Thank God. And would we all that it were so. Because of course, in the end it turns out there is only us.

So like I said, I'm a fan. I find myself looking forward to visiting and showing these house like you'd look forward to a visit to a spa, or a drink, or 10 milligrams of Valium after a long & brutal day. I can feel my blood pressure go down the second I push open the front door. And it's helped me recognize that what maybe I'm really looking for, as I endlessly search for the "perfect" house, is not an actual dwelling place, but rather a long-denied psychic balm for this one weary, middle-aged soul.