She grabbed BJ and went over to our neighbor, Edith Myers who cleaned it up and bandaged it. When I came home for lunch, she didn’t want to go to the doctor for stitches, and still has a small scar as a reminder of that encounter. I had one of the men from the job come over to weld the break.
In the summer, we took on a puppy from our next door neighbor and named him Laddy. He was a house dog and we had a running line in the yard running from the side porch to the corner tree. Over the years, he would take turns sleeping with either Karen and BJ in the room they shared, or with Dave in the Bedroom over the kitchen. Dave’s room had a back stairway down to the kitchen, and Laddie’s nails made a clickety-clop sound when he traveled up and down them.
In the lower part of the yard, between the road and Crooked Creek, the previous owners had built a small shed for their horses and had fenced off part of the area with a wooden corral. On one side, there was a spring which was fed from a drain running from the Myers farm field. Together with Bobby Lee Townsend we bought two ponies for the kids to ride. The kids enjoyed them for about a year before they lost interest, so we sold them.
Looking back on the early 1960s, it’s hard to believe that many rural areas like South Bend didn’t yet have any trash pickup available. Garbage and trash was hauled in trucks or cars and dumped over banks along rural roads, farmers dumped them in dug pits, and many rural households had a trash dump on some isolated portion of their property.
Along the creek, there were few households with septic tanks and the waste flowed into the streams from a sewer pipe. When we first moved here, there was an old outhouse still standing in the next property, which had been used up to a few years before we located here. The first thing we did when we bought the house was to install a septic tank and a drainage field in the lower part of our property.
Most the wells in the lower elevations were hand dug wells constructed 50 or so years earlier. Our hand dug well is beautifully constructed - about 16 feet deep, round with the perimeter made of hand laid stones. This was our water source until several years later when we had a deep well drilled.
We replaced the tin roof, which had some sheets lifted up in a violent summer windstorm, with a plywood base and shingles. All the original wooden windows were replaced with aluminum ones with storm panels. We also added a window to the north side of Dave’s bedroom, which gave it windows on three sides.
I had always wanted to grow some fruit trees, and Walter Myers gave me permission to plant a small grove on his property behind the barn. To make it legal, he made out a paper which read that I could use the land for “forty years and excess fruit.” About this time, Dave and I also planted the row of Northern Spruce which now tower over the east side of our property.
We decided to improve our half basement, and Dave spent several weeks one summer digging it down about 9 inches and hauling the dirt up the outdoor entrance steps. We poured the new concrete basement, bricked several areas, and enclosed the rest with a plywood siding.
While working at the Homer City Power Plant construction job, we had a wooden-frame office building while I was superintendent there. When the job was completed, the building was no longer needed and our general manager gave me permission to move it by sections to our place.
In the lower lot, where the old South Bend Mill had once stood, Dave and I poured some footings and bricked up supports for the floor joists, and started the erection. He and I had it completely erected, with an enclosed front porch by the time he went into the service. I spent most of my weekends for the next six months finishing the interior.
We had insulation pumped into all the outside walls of the main house, and later installed the aluminum siding and shutters on the house. Dave helped me with three sides and then enlisted in the service with the 101st Airborne paratroopers. I always kidded him that he joined the service to get some rest after the way I worked him, and he never denied it - just smiled.
To finish the front side of the house, I had Karen and BJ help me on the two tier scaffolding and they became quite adept at installing siding. New sidewalks were poured on the back side of the house, and a one-car garage with a back room for a woodshop was added. Later the balance of the outbuildings were incrementally added.
When we moved to South Bend in March, we had to learn how to operate the old coal furnace. Things went fine until one morning Margeet was moving the shaker handle when it came loose and struck the side of her forhead and gashed it.
The second year here, we decided to sell our house in Monongahela which was standing idle, and to buy this house for $12,000 when we found out it was for sale. We started improvements which extended over the next five years. The first thing we did inside the house was to install an oil furnace. Then we installed new inside doors. The previous owner had nicely pastered and finished all the inside walls and ceilings, but had taken off all the inside doors except for the one in the main bedroom.
Our House in 1900
Front View - Our House in 1965 When We Bought It
Back View - Our House in 1965 When We Bought It
Our House in 1990