I recently posted a picture of my husband, dog, and myself on Facebook. The photo was taken a few weeks after we got married, and we’re posing for a campaign picture at our new house. Five small rooms, one bath, 900 square feet of new beginnings, and a lot of work.
The tree was twice the size of our side lot. We also had a small shed behind the house. We put in a garden, then dusted off our hands. Our 20’ of backyard finished.
However, everything up to that point hadn’t been quite so rosy. We only had a couple of months in which to get married (short engagement!) and find a house that we could afford. The kicker was that it had to be in the right legislative district. Hubby was running for the Connecticut state legislature so we were restricted by certain boundaries. Houses in that district were rather expensive, but we finally found our little bungalow. My future mother-in-law cried throughout the house tour. Still not sure why. Maybe because the house was slightly very worn down? No matter. It was ours.
But there were a couple of issues.
One. We couldn’t move in after the closing because the elderly woman who had receivership was still living in the house. A complex problem, for sure. We definitely couldn’t kick out an old lady, even if she did have another place to live. It took her a long time to get rid of that 1920s horsehair sofa, depression glass, and all the other goodies in the house. Plus, it wouldn’t have looked good for a man running for the legislature to have the headline, “Young Couple kicks Elderly Woman to the curb.”
Two. It took two long weeks for her to finally move everything out. We met her at the house right after she’d finished moving out and she gave us a parting gift. Sweet!
Not.
It was a sprayer. “They only come out at night,” she said.
Seriously? What only comes out at night? Well, nothing good, for sure. Apparently, we had cockroaches and the whole house had to be fumigated.
But all was not lost. One of the more interesting items the woman left was a vintage stove. Can’t remember much about it. People weren’t into taking house pictures back then. It had four short legs and I think a four-burner top and two ovens. When we renovated the kitchen, we replaced it although it still worked. A vintage find for someone.
It wasn’t long after we moved in, we decided to wash the walls. We started in our gray kitchen. Big mistake. The first wet swipe revealed white walls underneath. It had to have been forty years or more since the kitchen was last painted.
The bedroom was so small, only a couple of pieces of furniture fit in it. Our double bed fit snuggly against one wall. My side, of course. So anytime I wanted to get up, I had to crawl over my husband or get off carefully at the end of the bed. His dresser was a foot away from the bottom of my side of the bed. Fun times in the middle of the night. There was a tiny closet, and that was it.
My mother-in-law graciously gave us two mini chairs and a sofa bed, which she recovered for us. The mini chairs were just that. You had to stand in front of them and let yourself fall into them because they were so short. If you tried to balance yourself and slowly sink down, you would be off-balanced.
One weekend we decided to refinish our wood floors. My husband worked day and night, removing old varnish and reapplying new. Who knew you can get high from the fumes? A hospital visit would be in our immediate future. He was a giddy, happy man for a couple of days.
In the wet, scary basement, there was a ginormous coal/oil furnace we had to replace. This was before people suited up to remove asbestos. The furnace guys came in and tore it out, the fibers floating everywhere. When they finished, they were covered with white flakes of asbestos. We would brush it off ourselves when we went upstairs and we live to talk about it.
When I think about all the safety devices we have now and how careful everyone is, I’m always amazed my generation made it through childhood. We had no seatbelts. The babies would be in a carrier on the floor of the car.
I remember my cigar-smoking dad never letting us open the windows when we went for a drive. When we finally stopped and opened our doors, a plume of smoke would follow us.
And what fun we had chasing those little silver mercury balls from broken thermometers around. They would roll and roll. Hours of entertainment.
Childhood games included throwing real darts at a bullseye or at your friends. Sort of like dodge ball, but with darts. Good times! No one ever got hurt that I remember.
Never question why your older relatives are so tough.
