Jim Busch’s home in White Oak was built by his wife;’s grandfather in 1927. The family calls it Tumbledown Manor.

Photograph by Jim Busch

I am the third Laird of Tumbledown Manor. I am the third owner of our family’s palatial home set on our ancestral lands.

Perhaps I am exaggerating just a little bit. Most people would say I own a tiny rundown frame home on a dead end street in an old section of White Oak.

My late wife was a big fan of movies about the English upper class like The Remains of the Day or Upstairs Downstairs. The lords and ladies lived in homes with names like Darlington Hall or Downton Abbey. Kidding around, I christened our very, very humble abode, Tumbledown Manor and the name stuck.

Our home is located on land that has been in my wife’s family for over 200 years. We own a tiny sliver of the original farmstead inherited by my wife’s grandmother early in the 20th century. Her grandfather built our home in 1927 out of salvaged materials. Originally the house was heated by the wood fired kitchen stove and the plumbing was a cistern pump and an outhouse. In 1958, the borough water lines reached our hill and the family installed the “Pittsburgh” bathroom in the basement. We still use it today. Our home is very basic, in addition to having no formal bathroom, my home still has no built-in closets.

My in-laws bought the home in the 1960s for $100 and added on to the structure. My wife grew up with her grandparents, parents and two sisters living in the tiny house. We moved in the 1970s with our two kids and for the next three decades, another multigenerational family filled the Manor with life and laughter. My wife and I bought our home for a $1,000 in the early 1990s. I have always seen the house like another member of the family, its chest rising and falling as generations come and go.

My kids sometimes complained about our cramped surroundings. Their friends had much larger and more modern homes. Despite this fact, their friends always seemed to gravitate to our house. They said our home was more fun and I think they liked my mother-in-law’s fresh baked cookies.

My son is a successful attorney and my daughter is a well-respected counsellor. Both careers require good people skills which I think they acquired negotiating timely access to our single bathroom. When my son married his attorney wife, she used to show her friends our home on the county’s tax website to show his humble beginnings. Not quite Lincoln’s log cabin, but close enough for her.

Over the years I have seen my children grow up and move away to start their own families and found their own homes. I saw my wife’s parents grow old and pass away. Finally I saw my wife grow weak with cancer and slip away from me. I am now the lonely Laird of Tumbledown Manor.

Friends sometimes ask me how I feel about living alone in the old house. They don’t understand that I am not alone. First I still have my wife’s two annoying cats, Sheldon and Nutmeg. She made me promise to care for them. But I also share my home with layer upon layer of memories. I make my morning eggs in the same black cast iron skillet that my wife, her mother and her grandmother used. While I am eating those eggs I look out at the birds, the deer and the groundhogs through the big picture window my father-in-law and I put in so many years ago. I still sleep in the bed that my wife designed and I built.

I can still hear the echoes of long lost voices in every room. I can hear the laughter of my children around the kitchen table, my mother-in-law singing old songs and my father-in-law’s grumbling. I can hear Janis Joplin blasting on the stereo as my wife danced around with the vacuum cleaner. I can still smell my mother-in-law’s fresh baked cinnamon rolls, my wife’s homemade rye bread and my father-in-law’s Camel cigarettes. My father-in-law passed away in January of 2000 but this morning when I walked outside to get my morning paper, I saw one of the heavenly blue morning glories he planted blooming in my side yard.

The pathway to Tumbledown Manor was built by Jim and his father-in-law. The bricks came from collapsed buildings in McKeesport.

Photograph by Jim Busch

I don’t sit by my phone waiting for Better Homes and Gardens to call to set up a photo spread of Tumbledown Manor. To tell the truth, my house is little better than a miner’s shack. It is showing its age and could use some serious remodeling. Still, there is nowhere I’d rather live. If I won the lottery tomorrow, I might put in central air, but I wouldn’t move. I’ve come to realize that while Tumbledown Manor isn’t much of a house, it has always been a wonderful home. Even more important, to me at least, it is my home, it is where I and my treasured memories live.

At this point in my life I have but one ambition left, and I am in no hurry to realize it, I want to die in my own home, in the bed I shared with my wife. My kids think this is morbid but, I am a realist, I know I can’t go on forever. I can’t think of a better place to check out than in my own bed surrounded by the memories of my life and of the people I loved.

For me, Tumbledown Manor is that place.       

- Jim Busch