I was raised in a five-room, red brick house with a big bay of 7 windows in the front and a covered open porch in the back. The house sat on a wide 60-foot city lot that had 11 large oak trees and one lone cherry tree. Our lawn was forever thin and sparse. My folks attributed our anemic grass to the shade from all those trees. But those trees sheltered the house from the summer sun and even in sweltering weather the house interior had a hint of cool.

When I was a kid air conditioning was the exception, not the rule. Back then cool could be found in basements and in slowing the pace down a tad. Windows had screens that went up and came down with the seasons and coaxed any breeze inside. Off my parents' bedroom there was a small glazed porch with nine big French windows. The spot was called a sleeping porch and there was an old metal cot with a thin, worn mattress tucked at one end of the room. I slept on that porch many a sweltering night with the windows all opened wide. The fragrance and sounds of the night were different out on that porch and it was like being off somewhere different and more interesting.

For a relatively small house, our home was filled with more than its share of doors. In the kitchen alone there were 6 doors. The back door, a pantry door, a door to the attic, a broom closet door, an ironing board door and a door leading to a hallway. The doors were mostly all the same - wood with two panels stained a dark mahogany, complete with a clear, crystal-like door knob.

The kitchen was a room planner's nightmare, but a vintage lover's delight. The wall surface was a glazed white tile that extended from the floor about five feet up the wall. The kitchen was equipped with a white metal cabinet sink as well as a stove and refrigerator. There was no counter space in the kitchen; my mom used the table or the sink drainer for food preparation. There were no cabinets in the room either. All the food and cookware was stored in the pantry. Our kitchen was primitive by today's standards, but I never recall going hungry. Apparently we did just fine.

The hallway off the kitchen was a small space that connected most of the other rooms. Counting the door into the kitchen, the hall had seven doors. There was the bathroom door, the linen closet door, the door to the basement, two doors leading to bedrooms, and finally the dining room door.

The dining room door was no doubt the least often used door in the house. It swung on pivots, not hinges, just like the doors to a commercial kitchen - so it did a 180-degree radius. But if the door swung open it blocked the basement door and if it swung shut it meant a knock in the head because a door closed at that spot in the house blocked off front from back. I can never recall the door being shut except to move it from its stationary position during rug vacuuming.

What that meant was that we lived with a big bulky redundant door that was forever in the way and served no purpose. That said, I don't think there was ever any discussion about maybe, perhaps, considering removing the door - it came with the house.

The windows throughout the house were mostly double hung wood windows. They were operated by the intricate workings of sash cords, weights and pulleys inside the window frames.

I close my eyes and hear the sounds of the windows and doors of my childhood. Back then it was all background noise to everyday living. Today the same noise is the portal to memory, a cool breeze blowing over times now gone.