Argyle
Before we moved here, we had to build it. There was a small old trailer on the site. While we were building it we used it as a base but after it was built it was given over to Sue as her own place but she had to pay Mom rent. It was never a great trailer to begin with. As the years passed it got worse.
I'm not recalling much about the beginning building except helping Dad to measure where he was going to lay the foundation. He had hired someone, maybe a Flewelling to bring him 6 loads of fill to make the space level.
Only 5 loads were brought but the man still demanded pay for 6. Dad said he had to pay him. I don't know why this happened this way but I would never have trusted a Flewelling in the first place if I'd known then what we would later know about this unscrupulous bunch.
I can see those mounds of dirt in my mind. I'd even taken a photo of them back then. I think the guy said we must have spread one out already and forgotten it. In those days, Dad didn't forget things and as we were there too, we would have noticed.
Dad didn't really know how to build a house. He knew basic stuff, but that was it. Sometimes he knew what he had to do but he wasn't clear on how to do it. Maybe if he was building a log cabin in the old west, it might have worked out.
It was a bad choice for a site in the first place but none of us had a clue about house building or sites. We had no choice but to go along with Dad. He made the deal, not us.
I'm sure he thought he was bettering our situation by getting us somewhere that had a well. I really believe that the well being there was the main reason he bought that land.
The second was that he was buying from the man himself and not going through a bank. It took him awhile to pay for it all but he did.
One thing he didn't count on was that the well would only be fine in summer and then only if our neighbor across the road had lived cleaner. All the nastiness from Dick Taylor's barn yard, and there was a lot of nasty stuff there, would eventually work its way down hill into our water system and foul it.
The water pump froze up every winter and often had to be fixed or replaced.
The third reason was because the moto-cross came to the Farley Road. Dad was afraid it would be there forever and there would be too much corruption and stuff he just didn't want his daughters around. He hated the noise and the traffic it did and would cause.
After that first event there was never another one held there as far as I know. Mom would write in her journals later about how much she missed the school house.
Dad measured out how big the house was going to be. I helped. Maybe one of the others did, too. I was always the one Dad got to hold the other end of measuring tape. After me it was Sue and she did all the things I did and probably more.
Maybe if Dad had sons it would have worked out better but somehow I doubt it.
The land was all uphill and downhill and really needed a bulldozer to flatten it out. Either Dad didn't know that or couldn't afford it. Maybe he just didn't think it was necessary.
Another bad thing about this place was the swamp area behind the house. When Dad had looked at the property I think it was a dry time of summer of fall. When spring came the swamp got really nasty. Water bubbled in places. Snakes were everywhere. Mosquitoes took over. Wild dogs would gather there as the years passed.
Dad needed the place surveyed to see how much was his to use as he wanted. They hired professional surveyors. When the guys went out there to measure, they would pound in a stake at intervals. When they went the next day the stakes would either be gone or moved. The neighbors did not want us to succeed. They didn't finish the job but they still had to be paid.
I somehow think that Dad thought it would all get better someday but it never did. It just got worse.
Dad got cement or rather cinder stone blocks. I think Cement blocks are stronger and cost more. Dad would have gone for the cheapest he could get. I think all of us who were home helped him lay out those blocks and he cemented them together. I'm pretty sure Mom helped with it too.
I do not remember Enid being there at all. I think she was just working somewhere. I do have memories of Enid living here at some point. Nancy had graduated high school the year we left Kingsbury so she would have been living with Millie most of the time we were building. She was there at times though because I can see her there when the blocks were being put down.
Dad was sure his measurements were right and they might have been. Numbers and I do not play on the same field so I wouldn't know. What I do know is that over time parts of the foundation sunk father into the soft soil while others did not. We wouldn't know that for a few years, though.
After the blocks were down, it was time to start on the floor. Even, I, who knew nothing about building a house, thought there should have been more layers to the floor and more two by fours or whatever they were for that floor to rest on. Now that I think about it a bit more I think he should have had more support things under the 2X4's. I think he had some but I doubt they were enough for the width of the house.
Dad didn't use the thicker plywood. He didn't measure exactly how far the boards (2x4's) should be. He may have cut corners by putting less of them than he should have. I'll never know.
He laid down the plywood. I think the idea was that there were supposed to be more than one layer and they were supposed to go in different angled directions. I'm probably saying that wrong. It doesn't matter because once again, he didn't really know what he was doing.
I think there were supposed to be layers of something, maybe tar paper, between the plywood layers but I'm not sure on that either. Its hard for a person who knows next to nothing about house building can tell you where someone else went wrong. It's only speculation on my part.
The floor bounced. It dipped when you stepped on it. It always did and it always would. Cold air came up through the cracks in winter. If you tried to walk down the hall you would be leaning in one direction or another.
I think he may have constructed the wall supports before he did the floor which to my way of thinking would have been the wrong timeline for it. I base this on movies not on personal knowledge.
He really tried with this, to have them the right distance apart and he may have succeeded at it. He knew that in order for the sheet rock to fit, the supports had to be measured right. I really can't think what these things are called. Maybe its studs? I am not now, nor have I ever been a builder. I just followed his orders.
Dad knew sheetrock. Sue hates sheetrock with a passion. I hated the work. It was aggravating holding those sheets up while he fastened them in place. I thought he used some kind of staple gun thing but I'm probably wrong on that. They broke easily and if they got wet in any way, they would crumble.
As a writer I should have been more observant. I only worked with him when I wasn't at work at my jobs. I was working full time at the Catheter place.
He planned out rooms. There was one huge one that was the kitchen living room. Next came two bedrooms followed next by another bedroom and the toilet. At either end was a shed like place for storage of things like wood for the fires or his tools at one end and stuff of Moms at the other end.
This sounded fine as with only Sue and me there most of the time we wouldn't need more rooms.
When he got to the roof supports I think he ordered them all made but I could be wrong on this. I'm going to get Sue to read this to tell me where I goofed up in the telling because I'm sure I did.
You see in the movies where the roof part is shaped in an inverted "V" and it looks huge. Dad's was not so huge. It left a small crawl space like area for an attic but no one cared at the time. The squirrels loved it. In the fall and winter you could sometimes hear them up there rolling their nuts back and forth.
I did help with the roofing. I don't remember the plywood sheets going down for the roof but I have very un-fond memories of the tar paper. He also later used some kind of white fuzzy roofing paper to repair Sue's trailer roof. He said it was supposed to keep out the rain.
He didn't just roll out tar paper and tack it down and put shingles on it either. He did do all that with the help of which ever one of us was brave enough and dumb enough to get up there and do it with him but you also had to smear tar around with a big brush.
You had to let the tar heat up from the sun before you could move it around. I believe the tar was not so much to hold down the tar paper which already had tar built into it but it was supposed to keep the roof from leaking. I think the idea was to cover where the nails were and the seems so the rain wouldn't get inside.
Over time leaks always developed and it was up to which ever one of us was handy to go there and fix that. I do remember after Dad had passed on coming out from Ohio and doing this with Mom or for her. It was cold and no fit day for spreading tar but I did what I could.
He did put shingles up there and I'm pretty sure I helped with that. He may have hired one of the Taylor boys to help him at times but I think they just popped over to socialize with Dad. I'm possibly wrong on that.
He got aluminum things to go around the chimney. I don't know how he built the chimney or even if he built it on his own. I do remember fitting the pipe pieces together. It had to be at an angle so the smoke would go up and later when he burned coal the coal gasses would go up the pipe too.
When he burned wood, he was supposed to not burn green wood. That was because of moisture in the wood. When it burned, black creosote would ooze down the wall or the pipe, where ever gravity took it. There are photos of Dad sitting in a chair and you can see where the creosote ran down the back wall.
You also had to be choosy in the kind of wood you burned. Some woods burned fast and put out hardly any heat while others burned at a slower rate and did put out heat. Unfortunately that heat never reached far.
It was often cold. You would stand by the stove in winter to warm up and your front side would get all blotchy with the heat while your back side froze. You'd have to rotate now and then in order to stay warm.
In the movies, I had seen houses being built where the plumbing and electric went in before the studs were covered. Basic plumbing would be put in when there were open walls and electric before the danged sheet rock. Not so with Dad.
He got PVC pipe later after the rest was built and worked it from the pump in the kitchen to the toilet in the back. He got a second hand toilet. It was an ugly pink color. The toilet did flush but it took awhile for the tank to fill up. You couldn't be doing anything else with the electric at the same time.
The electric was basically a bunch of long yellow or orange heavy duty extension cords. Nobody inspected anything. I don't even think he had a permit to build in the first place. He might not have needed one then.
In order to have electric we needed a pole. That was more money. It took awhile and Dad got his pole. The power company came out and put it up and rigged electric to the pole and down the side of it to a box. At the box, you literally plugged in the house.
Sue already had electric in the trailer but I think it was also plugged into the pole at this time. If there was a power failure, it was either a bad cord or a cord that had somehow came unplugged from the box.
I'm not sure but I think he had a fuse box there or at lest a breaker bar so he could shut it down if he needed too. I remember him telling Mom that a breaker bar was safer but at the time I had no idea what a breaker bar even was. I'm still not sure if I'm using the right terminology for any of this.
We had moved in long before any of this was completed. Dad had sold the school house to some old lady who cheated him. I don't know all the details but she really got it for a very small amount of cash and never finished paying for it, swearing she already had.
Dad never did have a good head for business. He was fond of telling stories of how his Dad had cheated another farmer out of bull or a heifer. I forget which it was. I shouldn't have forgotten because he told that story a lot.
For running the kitchen range we had bottled gas. It was stinky. The pilots lights had to be kept lit all the time or you would risk inhaling poison gas or having the house explode. I think with all the cracks the house would never have built up enough gas in it to explode. Thankfully we never had to put my theory to the test.
If a pilot light went out you could smell the gas. I did wonder about that once. I was told that they put something into the gas when they bottle it to make it smell like onions so you will know. A man would deliver the tanks of gas. Then I think they just came out with a big truck and refilled them when they were running low. I think I recall Mom saying once that the tanks really belonged to the gas company.
In all the time living here we always bathed from a basin or the sink in the kitchen. We didn't have a bathtub or a shower. Sue had them at the trailer but I don't think they worked well, either.
Dad tried to build a cesspit or whatever thats called but the rains came and it over filled and he just gave up. You didn't want to go walking in the swamp anyway even if you could have stood the smell.
We knew other people lived better than us but unless we were willing to leave home we had to make do with what we had. For the most part, we lived rustic but we kept ourselves clean unless I was on the roof messing with tar and that was another story.
Mom and Dad fished a lot. They mostly caught bullheads and sunfish. Once Dad brought home a big trout when we were living in Kingsbury. He cleaned the guts out but he left the skin and head and fins on it.
He put it in Mom's roaster and covered it with a milky concoction of "I don't what and don't want to know." He baked it in the oven. I don't know for sure who ate it but I know it wasn't me. I was never one for liking to have my food watch me while I ate it. I just refused to go near it.
It was bad enough I had to clean the pan he baked it in. It was an awful mess of burnt on stuff and took a lot of scrubbing to get it clean. Mom was not pleased about her pan.
Mom also foraged for what she could. Sometimes it was wild foods and sometimes it was seeds and roots that she could sell.
I have fond memories of rambling on country roads looking for nut trees. I know what its like to find wild things growing and know I can eat them.
I remember finding a pear tree once along the side of the road. There were no houses for miles and it was near enough to the road to be called public property. We picked what ever we could reach. Finding a nut or apple tree was always a bonus!
When we first moved in here, Dad got men to help him. I think he got Cindy's man and some boys. It was truly awful.
There was my big roll top desk. They didn't move it off they truck. They threw it off. It hit the ground and broke in a few places. I was so upset over that. Then he offered to take it off our hands but Dad said no. I later gave it to Uncle Arty for his garage. I couldn't bear to look at it again.