The "Old House"

When we had been married a few years, Bob's mom and stepdad wanted us to buy their house where we live now and live close to Grandma Mollie and help her, take her to the store, the doctor, pretty much wherever and whatever she wanted. They were going to move to their property in Garrison. I knew Bob wanted to buy the house and move back where he was half raised, so I agreed and we moved here. 

We lived in the house that Clell Pierce, (Gma Mollie's bro) had built, he had built 2 rooms, what we used as the kitchen and a bedroom that opened off the kitchen. Bill Hurst had built 3 more rooms onto the house when he and Clessie, Billy Joe and Jan had lived there. The older part of the house was starting to fall down, and the newer part was definitely getting old and worn. But we liked it okay, and liked the setting. 

Anyway, I always seperated the house in my mind, there was the living room, and 2 bedrooms in a line behind the living room in the newer part of the house, and the kitchen opened off the living room and a bedroom opened off the kitchen...like this...

It isn't exact, or to scale, but gives an idea...living room on the bottom right, our bedroom middle right, the little bedroom top right. The kitchen is on the bottom left corner and the old bedroom is on the top left. Lynn and Alicia shared the old bedroom after Alicia got a little older but first Lynn slept in the little back bedroom and Bob and I had the middle bedroom. Bob's mom and Scott had the old bedroom, but Bob wanted the middle one when we moved in, I guess because that was his old room. Anyway. Of course, we never made an attempt to maintain anything and the house started falling down around us. We had boarded up one of the windows in Lynn and Alicia's room, and had plastic over the left window in the kitchen for years because all the glass was gone from it. Got pretty cold in there, let me tell you. A few mornings when we got up the water in the bucket was frozen. We didn't have running water in the house at this time, we drew water out of the well right outside the kitchen door, with a rope and old fashioned bucket. The well was very deep and somebody through the years had fixed an electric winch on it, but it didn't work and so we pulled it up. Part of the reason I used to be strong. 

We moved into this house in September 1974, after Lynn was 2 years old that August. We had Alicia in August,  1976 and still didn't have water in the house. We had never had running water in any house we had lived in since getting married in 1970, so that wasn't a big deal..... yes it was, I hated it. I had lived without running water in the house when I was lots younger, but from the time I was 9 years old, we had running water in the house. Anyway, I made do like I had to...finally in 1977 Bob decided it was time for running water in the house. When you do something like that, it involves  lots of expense and time when there is NOTHING but an old well there, and no fixtures for a bathroom or sink in the kitchen or anything else.  We had the well drilled out even deeper. Nim McIntosh drilled it out for us and put a pump in the well. Then Bob and my dad put in a new electric breaker box, ran pipe to the kitchen and the small back bedroom we had decided to turn into a bathroom. I took the old metal cabinets that somebody had given Bob's mom and moved them from where they were against the wall and put them in front of the window. Bad move, but I was determined to have the sink in front of the window where I had noticed lots of other houses had the kitchen sink. We couldn't re-do the window so I put some boards over the bottom of the window and set the sink there anyway. Bad choice on my part, the pipes froze there more easily than they would have up against the inside wall, but oh wells....

We boarded up the door that was in the little back bedroom  and made a closet out of the space between the tub and the wall. Toilet sat against the inside wall directly in front of the opposite window and the sink beside the toilet. We also put the dryer in the bathroom because there wasn't enough room for it in the kitchen. The washer was in the kitchen beside the cabinets with the sink, and our hot water tank in the corner.

We lived there many years and was happy. The kitchen floor finally got so rotten that holes were developing in it in a few spots. I wanted to remodel it, add on a room to it and live there but Bob thought that was too big an expense for how old the house was, so we moved into the house by the road until it finally was falling down on us, then bought the double wide trailer we live in now, and bulldozed off the old house and put this house where it stood. 

Still makes me sad to think about the old house....many, many precious memories. 



~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~