Nathan Friday, the owner of 4019 Old Canton Road in Jackson, Mississippi, sees things in the house that others don’t.
“It’s more of a home to me than my wife, of course,” Friday, 61, told Homes.com. “There’s all of my memories of growing up, all the birthday parties we had.”
Friday left his childhood home after graduating high school in the 1980s. He and his wife moved back after his father passed away and his mother moved into assisted living. Returning has given the retired Caterpillar dealer a unique perspective on the differences between the two eras of his time with the house.
Now planning a move to a farm he owns in the north of the county, Friday has the home on the market with an asking price of $599,000. Kimberly Walker of E Speed Realty is handling the listing.
Playing carried risks
The 4,500-square-foot Colonial was built in 1950, the decade that produced most of the homes in the neighborhood, according to Friday. Friday’s father, a doctor of internal medicine, bought the home in 1975 for an undisclosed amount. Friday was moving from 4th to the 5th grade then.
The house sits on a 1.68-acre lot. At the time, the neighbors also had large lots, creating open and wooded space for kids to play. One neighbor’s son, roughly the same age as Friday and his brother, had a go-kart.
“That was the first friend that we came across,” Friday said. “Then my brother and I got go-karts for Christmas.”
Driving around the surrounding forest and camping in the yard became the default activity for kids in the neighborhood.
“We spent a lot of time riding around, having pinecone wars,” Friday said. “You’d have a box at your feet full of pinecones that you’d throw at the next guy. We’d play Army and all that fun stuff.”
The kids were largely left to entertain themselves, which was not without its dangers. “Old Canton Road is a big, wide road,” Friday said. “You were always worried about getting run over. It was kind of a busy street.”
'Everybody came here'
The four-bedroom, 5.5-bathroom house was also the gathering place for extended family. “When we had Christmas or Thanksgiving, everybody came here,” Friday said.
Friday said the dining room, which could seat 12, was full for every holiday and celebration. “This is where we would bring our girlfriends and later our wives.”
And family members weren’t the only visitors. Friday’s father was an avid fan of the Mississippi State Bulldogs.
“He actually hosted the entire MSU Maroon Band here at our house twice,” Friday said. “Cheerleaders, flag girls, all of them.”
The buses parked in the street in front of the house while Friday and his family served the coterie barbecue.
“The front and back yards were full of band people in their uniforms. Those were the days when MSU and Ole Miss played their rivalry game just down the street at Mississippi Memorial Stadium. It was quite the event.”
The neighborhood grows up
Changes started to happen to the neighborhood after Friday moved away for college. In the 1990s, real estate developers purchased one of the large neighboring lots to Friday’s house and turned it into a gated community.
“Tore the house down, put a cul-de-sac right up the middle and built these million-dollar, zero-lot-line houses,” Friday said.
Another developer made an offer to Friday’s parents with the intention of doing something similar. “My parents would not sell,” he said. “They were going to die in this house.”
Friday said he still sees his childhood in the house, such as in the den with its brick floor and fireplace. All the bricks came from an old building on a farm property his family owned.
“We would come home from school, and my dad would have a big pile of bricks in the den,” he said. “We would sit there and clean bricks. My brother and I hammered on just about every brick in there.”
And Friday can even see the remnants of the era before his family owned it, such as the staff's bathroom in what was a two-car garage that is now a mother-in-law suite, he said.
“You know, back in the day, they would make the maid go outside to use the bathroom,” Friday said. “It’s not something that I would have agreed with. It’s just history.”
But the woods he drove go-karts around in have homes now. The Ole Miss-Mississippi State match-up is happening at the State campus this year. And the house’s neighborhood of Fondren has started changing.
“They’re sprucing up Fondren now,” he said. “It’s got its own little downtown that’s real artsy. It’s got coffeeshops and all that stuff. … It’s all just a part of Fondren growing up.”