Childhood memories are powerful triggers. Two nights ago, I found myself telling the grandkids an inconsequential, long-ago story. Yet, as the details of the memory hit me, they stopped me cold.

My grandson had sweetly suggested that grandpa should put in an elevator so grandma didn’t have to carry the heavy laundry up the stairs. “You can’t put elevators in houses!” shot back my granddaughter. To my surprise, I bellowed out: “Of course you can,” and so began my jog to the past.

In a twinkle, I was perched on the seat of my beloved purple bicycle at a 90-degree bend in a long street, staring up at a house that contained the most marvelous thing: an elevator! We kids never actually saw the elevator or any evidence of it, such as a jutting tower added on. But an adult statement (or authoritative rumor) had caused us to know that an elevator had been installed in this house to facilitate a resident no longer able to walk up the staircase. Would a child in today’s modern world find this fascinating? I don’t know. My grandkids did and peppered me with questions, but we are raising vintage kids over here, so their reactions may not be typical.

Looking back, some of the fascination we neighborhood kids had with this elevator surely was fueled by the house’s modern architecture. It was a wonder to our eyes, its blonde-brick exterior (one story with full basement in the sleek new “ranch” style) stretched across a landscaped, manicured lawn. It contrasted strongly with the other homes on the street, built mostly in the 1920s or 30s. Inevitably these had two stories, were topped by a full attic, and featured a broad front porch reached by stone steps.

This particular street had the name Sunset Avenue, presumably because of its great views of the sunset across the Roanoke Valley. It was one of two streets that stepped up the flank of a mound called Round Hill—a defining point in our area with a modest elevation of 1,247 feet. To us kids,  Round Hill was a real mountain, especially during big snows when the streets down it would be closed for sleighing.

A new neighborhood was sprouting from the forested top of Round Hill consisting of fancy houses of mid 1960s design made of pastel-painted wood or the new material called siding, with no front porches at all! These made us think of Hollywood, albeit for no good reason. Suffice it to say, we did not ride our bikes up there.

But Sunset Avenue, with its old houses and the magical “elevator house,” was all ours! I had a personal connection to the street, not just because we biked so often along it, but because one of its stately homes had been built by my grandfather, Robert Vernon Bailey, a successful builder in the 1920s.

I heard endless tales about this family house on Sunset. My father lived there until the house was lost (along with all family assets) subsequent to the Crash of 1929. He never stopped mourning that loss. That may be why he told us such colorful renditions about its famous cistern (not sure why, since houses did have cisterns back then), the sensation of the cool stone front steps in summertime, where the kids sat and played while the grownups took up the porch rockers. He told about the polished, dark hardwoods whose main responsibility was to squeak if the older siblings tried to sneak out at night.

Still, I barely looked at that house when we cruised Sunset Avenue. Instead, my companions and I headed for the bend in the street, parked our bikes, and began spinning our theories about life in the “elevator house.”

Who knows how often or how long we stayed there? My memory says we spent long stretches of time in that spot. We never saw anyone going in or out (which in the era of stay-at-home moms was strange). Occasionally, an unfamiliar car was parked for a half day—a housekeeper, maybe? The house’s stillness helped us conjure up tales about the goings-on inside, most of which involved that elevator. Either the owner was a prince or count (who else could afford an elevator?), or perhaps a secluded movie star (those people might afford elevators). We even developed a theory that this poor man was being kept a prisoner by an evil staff who conveyed him up and down the elevator. I also had a theory that no one actually lived inside—only an elevator that went up and down on its own power.

Later, the same night after the grandkids were in bed, I found the “elevator house” on Zillow. With a start, I saw it now valued at 430K. That amount would have purchased the whole street in my day!

Based on the single picture, the house seems unchanged. The yard is still manicured and slopes up (but is neither as large nor as steep as I remembered). The stand of trees to the right is pretty, but not a real forest as we believed it to be. The house’s geometric design and light brick façade belie its construction date of 1950, that is for sure! Also, the Zillow description of “4,000 sq. feet with four bedrooms and four baths” confirms my childhood sense that it was something of a mansion. Alas, there was no mention of an elevator.

But tell me this: how do two nouns (“elevator” and “house”) and a bit of chit-chat trigger a mental process that instantly produces the physical sensation of sitting at a specific spot on the seat of a specific bike, staring at a specific building more than a half-century ago? What allows the mind to do that?

Furthermore, how can such a memory fill a person (me) with the sense of actual, physical excitement? Instantly, I wanted to drop my dish towel, drive two hours up to Roanoke, knock on the door of that house, and ask the present owners “Is there really an elevator in this house?”

Thinking about it while staring at the picture on Zillow, I wondered whether the cycling partners from my childhood cherished the same memory? My guess that they do is inspired by a precious children’s book called Roxaboxen, sent to me by my dear friend Jane.

Probably you know the book, although I did not. Written by Alice McLerran and illustrated by Barbara Cooney, Roxaboxen (1991) tells the story of a young girl and her playmates who create an entire make-believe town from the emptiness of a hillside in what appears to be a desert landscape. The details of their creative play are wonderfully described, but the book ends with a focus on the powerful draw this imaginary town of childhood exerts on the main character when she revisits the site as an adult.

In today’s world, where kids often have so little freedom to roam their neighborhoods seeking adventure, and where a group of kids stopping repeatedly to stare at a dwelling might evoke an unwelcome response, my memories of the “elevator house” seem like an exoticism. And therein lies the pity. Kids need to have imaginary towns as in Roxaboxen. They need to have unusual houses in their neighborhoods wherein they can imagine all sorts of extravagances. They need to inherit and perpetuate local legend and lore, and add to them with their own fantasies.

And while I am extolling the virtues of kids roaming, I do acknowledge all the reasons why such roaming is either impossible or a bad idea in many situations today. Case in point, our grandkids’ school lies little more than a mile away. In a different era, they would walk or ride their bikes. But the route involves a narrow, busy, two-lane road with no shoulders. When this road was built, there would have been little traffic on it. Today, it is dangerous even for an adult walker or biker. So a truly valuable part of the grandchildren’s childhood—the experience of getting somewhere independently through walking or riding a bike—is simply lost to them.

Many of you who read my essays were blessed with childhoods unencumbered by modern limitations. You left the house on Saturdays after chores and played wherever your feet (or bike tires) would go until forced by hunger or darkness to return home. Backyards were your stages for creating imaginary forts and cities. The slightest thing that squeaked or squawked could turn into a wild adventure. You came home, like I, with muddy shoes, clothes riddled with briars, and perpetual cases of insect bites or poison oak.

It is good to tell our old stories, I think. It is especially good to give children books like Roxaboxen, not to mention more vast compendia like The Chronicles of Narnia. Children need such resources to feed their imaginary dramas and outright adventures. To whatever degree we can, let us amplify these experiences for today’s young ones (and even for ourselves!). Without them, there will be fewer stories to tell their children and grandchildren.