If these old walls could talk, what memories would they share?Despite earnest invitations, Tim and Connie Connell haven’t been inside our house since they moved out and we moved in in 1996.And that’s probably just as well. After more than 20 years of Connell occupancy, it doesn’t look much like the Connell home anymore.Their daughter had a feminine room with an ornate daybed and lace curtains on the balcony door.That room is now occupied by a boy and the décor is NASCAR posters and denim valances.We gave up a little history (a porcelain sink and original cabinets for example, and a closed-off maid’s stairwell) in favor of a bigger kitchen, which we gutted and updated.The Connell TV room is now our office, and their formal sitting room is now our TV room.The biggest change is the yard, which is now five miles northeast of town where we moved the house to make room for Grace Lutheran’s parking lot.It’s safe to say that the Connell home over the past 10 years has become the Ehde home, complete with our own family memories.But if the walls could talk, they’d remind both families that they housed the Sherman family long before the Connells or the Ehdes lived there.Russell Sherman (son of Dr. C.L. Sherman) and his wife, Blanch, also raised their family in the house, which was in the Sherman name for more than 40 years.It was built in 1890 at 503 N. Estey (now Grace Lutheran’s parking lot) by James Harroun, who sold it to the Shermans in 1936.The Sherman family rented the home to Tim Connell when he returned to Luverne after law school in 1976 and eventually sold it to him and Connie in 1978.Jim Sherman recently contacted me about his childhood home, which he hadn’t revisited for 30 years.First, he shipped the original decorative kerosene chandeliers in two heavy UPS boxes. The brass fixtures need polishing and the ornate accessories require expert assembly, but they’re "home." His second correspondence was to request a visit. He and his delightful wife, Merlene, stopped in while traveling through the area earlier this month.I was self-conscious about my housekeeping, but he clearly wasn’t seeing the house as I presented it. As he strolled through the house, his memory took him back more than a half century to his childhood.He didn’t see the NASCAR posters on the walls of his former room. He saw only himself as a boy, sneaking out onto the balcony after bedtime.He didn’t see the computer on the desk in the office. In that spot, he saw his mother’s dining room table with a covered glass bowl in which he once stashed unwanted peas at dinnertime. His mother later hosted tea for her church circle women, one of whom opened the lid to release the rotting stench of his misbehavior. He couldn’t talk fast enough to share the stories as they came back to him.He remembered rolling cigarettes with neighborhood boys in a three-story tree house in the yard. A neighbor, seeing the smoke, summoned the fire department.His nostalgic trek through the rooms even led him inside the hall closet to see if his growth chart was still marked there in pencil. (It had been painted over.)My parents still live in the house I grew up in by Kenneth, so I have the luxury of returning to my roots whenever I go home for Sunday dinner.But the Shermans’ visit made me wonder what memories my children are collecting within the walls of the Ehde home.Will they remember festive birthday parties and decorating Christmas trees? Or will they recall routine events, like bedtime stories or after-supper bike rides down the gravel road?I hope their little minds will blot out episodes I’d like them to forget, such as poor parenting moments or burying beloved pets.Yes, the Shermans are solid reminders for all of us that every day is a new opportunity to create happy memories within the walls of our own homes.