Have you ever wished you could, just once, glide your hand down the polished wood bannister of the stairs you raced down a million times as a child?

Have you ever wished to sit for a moment under the towering shade tree that you planted as a thin sapling so many years ago?

Or, gazing at the past from the other side of the fence, have you ever wondered about the portrait you found forgotten in a crevice of the attic of the home you just bought? Have you wondered about the people who once lived here? What their lives were like, the stories they could tell about these walls of lath and plaster?

Going home again is such a common theme that Miranda Lambert brought it beautifully to life in her 2009 song, “The House That Built Me.”

The story begins

Mo Duffy Warford will never forget the two-story house on the 800 block of Division Street in Webster City that built her and her four siblings. When the home’s current owners, Reed and Lisa Neff, invited Warford to come visit, she brought along her husband, Jeff Warford, to see the house he had heard so much about.

“It was so cool,” Mo Warford said. “I just loved going back. When you’ve been away from a house for a long time, it’s just amazing.”

It was an unexpected invitation. For a few hours on a winter’s afternoon, Lisa Neff most graciously led the Warfords through the 1924 house they are now restoring.

“I had found a few things, not a lot, but I had all these fantasies,” about the history of the home and people who had lived here, Lisa Neff said.

The Neffs moved in just over four years ago and have occasionally had people stop by, sharing memories of the Martin and Gerry Duffy family who had owned the home from 1956 through 1988.

“You could see them walking down memory lane,” Neff said of the visitors talking about card parties and happy times shared among friends in the house.

Neff’s desire to contact members of the Duffy family peaked when her husband found a photo in the attic while he was preparing to do some work. The photo dates from the early 20th Century and features members of the Clinton Police Department, including Capt. Martin Duffy.

Warford’s father and brother share the Martin Duffy name, but it was the original Martin Duffy, her grandfather, who would go on to serve as chief of police in Clinton. After his passing, his widow, Mae Duffy, would become a frequent visitor in the home on Division Street.

Still, Neff wasn’t quite sure how to find the Duffy family today. That was until an article appeared in The Daily Freeman-Journal marking Gerry Duffy’s 100th birthday last September.

“I saw the article in the paper about Mrs. Duffy,” Neff explained.

From that, she found Warford’s name, and reached out to her on Facebook. The two messaged several times before leading up to Neff’s invitation to come and visit the home. Because the Neffs value historic preservation, they also wanted Warford’s input on what the house had looked like when she called it home.

“I really enjoyed hearing all of her stories, and it helped me fill in some of the blanks,” Neff said. “It added more life to the house.”

Warford, a 1975 graduate of Webster City High School, can still recall with a laugh how she and a friend would swipe her mother’s cigarettes and smoke them under the porch.

But life there wasn’t all mischief.

Warford said it was always her job to watch her baby brother in the bassinet while her mother did the ironing. And she can still picture her mom sitting at a school desk beside a window and chatting for what seemed like hours on the phone with friends.

For Warford’s younger brother, Mark, it would be the only home in which he would ever live. She can barely look at the beautiful wood and leaded glass of the home’s front door without recalling the very cold night in January 1981 when the late Sgt. Dave Hansen came knocking with the most tragic news the family would ever know. Mark was a senior at Webster City High School when he lost his life in a car accident.

Fortunately, the home is also filled with happy memories of her younger brother. He left his name both carved and painted in the concrete walls of a basement hang-out room. After all, every teenager needed a basement hang-out room to call his own in the 1970s. The peace symbols on the wall may be a little faded, but the paint still endures after more than 50 years of wear.

The next chapter

The Neffs purchased the home in 2020, having seen it only online. They were moving from Alaska and didn’t have a lot of time to do in-person house hunting. Webster City ended up on their property search due to its proximity to the Mayo Clinic in Rochester, Minnesota.

The Neffs had been living in Gakona, Alaska, for about 25 years. Gakona is a very small town, quite secluded even by Alaskan standards. The town is known as an excellent location for viewing the Northern Lights and the High Frequency Active Auroral Research Program is located nearby.

For the last several years, the Neffs have travelled with their youngest son, Tucker, for regular care at the renowned Mayo Clinic. They finally decided to move closer to Rochester and were ready for a town with more services than Gakona afforded.

“We literally drew a half circle around Rochester, within a three-hour time frame for travel,” Neff said.

They wanted to be south of Rochester.

“I wanted a town that wasn’t super big, but was big enough,” she said. “We had been in the middle of nowhere for 25 years.”

A Minnesota native, Neff wanted to try a place that neither she nor her husband, who grew up in Oregon, had ever lived before. They also wanted an older home, noting that Alaska doesn’t have a lot of older homes, simply because it was settled so much later than other states.

“There are old villages, but there are no houses like this in Alaska,” she explained.

Looking at house photos online, the Duffy home stood out and seemed to speak to the couple.

“I feel like the house kind of chose us,” Neff said. “We bought it before we saw it. My brother owns a construction business in Minnesota, and I did have him come and walk through it before we bought it.”

The couple opted against a home inspection, accepting the fact that a house built in 1924 was going to need some loving care.

“We knew it was an old house and we knew we were going to have put a lot of work into it,” she said.

So far, the couple has tackled some major projects, including a new roof and new siding. They replaced several windows and plan to restore other windows. They have redone an upstairs bathroom and painted several rooms. The home’s rich woodwork remains in beautiful condition — untouched by a paint brush. A towering built-in hutch with leaded glass doors is a showpiece in the dining room.

The wood-burning fireplace in the front room has the same green glazed tile as once seen in one of Webster City’s premier historic homes, the Zitterell House. Located across the street from the Neff’s, William Zitterell, an early day general contractor, built his Queen Anne-style home in 1901. The Patrou home, just west of the Duffy/Neff home, dates to 1888, while a few homes on the block are more recent.

Warford recalls growing up on this block as a place rich in history and beauty.

“The street was so pretty because it was a brick street,” Warford recalled.

Like many streets in the central core, this section of Division Street was once paved in brick. A similar section on Des Moines Street, now known as the Boulevard of Valor, was one of the last brick streets to be paved, sometime in the 1970s.

While Willson Avenue is the area many think of first when it comes to historic homes in Webster City, Division Street, and several homes on the nearby First Street, can more than hold their own in historic and architectural value and integrity.

Every home has its own history. The Neffs are adding their own family legacy to the home the Duffy family — and their friends — so enjoyed. There will be new stories for these old walls to tell, new memories to be made.

The tree Mark Duffy planted here in the 1970s was but a twig that even his mother said would never grow — but it did. It still stands as a link from the past to the future.

Build your own time capsule

Inspired to leave a time capsule in your own home? Here’s a few ideas of what to leave behind for future residents to discover:

• Plans or drawings of the home’s current layout, including yard and garden. Make it colorful with crayons and stickers.

• A current, local newspaper.

• A family photo around the Christmas tree with names and dates.

• A decoration or ornament as a gift for the next owners.

• A one-paragraph note from every family member, regardless of age, of what they love about the house. Children’s drawings make a wonderful touch.

Once completed, compile all items in a water-proof box and tuck it the corner of an attic, inside a wall, or some other place it might one day be safely found. If one box doesn’t work, feel free to wrap individual items in plastic and hide various “treasures” in multiple locations of the home.