Cobun Avenue

I lived in this house for about a year beginning in late summer 1986. It’s located in Morgantown, West Virginia. Like many old houses in Morgantown, it had been partitioned into apartments and rented out to WVU students. I had the two front rooms on the second floor. Back in the day, it had been a lovely home, and it still retained some of it’s elegance when I lived there, but it was quite run down by then. The girl who lived in the rooms at the back of the second floor was named Myra, I think. She was a tall, thin, socially awkward, high strung girl, and she was a graduating senior. I don’t recall her ever having any friends over.

Late the next spring, Myra started cleaning, and not just her own rooms. She scrubbed the enclosed front porch. At the time, it had windows all around, and she polished every pane. She cleaned the door facings, too. Then she moved onto the entrance hall with it’s large wooden mantel and the paneled oak staircase that had been mercifully left intact.

Because of my social anxiety, I was too shy to ask her why she was doing all of this, but my friend Nathan did ask. That’s how I found out her parents and grandparents were coming for her graduation, and she wanted the house to look nice for them.

When the parents and grandparents came, they set up a reception there in the entrance hall. They even had a table loaded down with food, and several folding chairs placed around the fireplace. I hardly new Myra, and I didn’t know her relatives at all, so this embarrassed me. I smiled at them, politely turned down their offer to eat and chat, and dashed up to my rooms. They were there for a couple of days, and I never saw anyone join Myra’s little graduation party.

They had all gone to such lengths. I regret not finding the nerve to stop for a piece of cake.