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"The time has come," the Walrus said,
'To talk of many things;
Of shoes - and ships - and sealing wax -
Of cabbages - and kings -
And why the sea is boiling hot -
And whether pigs have wings."
Lewis Carroll
The Walrus and the Carpenter
Did these events actually occur as described? Cervantes wrote that "truth is the mother of history." Perhaps this small bit of history is true. You decide as we start in Dallas and move progressively (at times) to other environs.
All the individuals that people this account really existed, although in some cases, time has blurred the images and perhaps added spice to the tale. Properly it should be titled, THIS OLD HOUSE and like most every other "homes", this old house can be seen from several views.
Dad gave up on being a Fuller-brush salesman and decided to move the family back to the farm. It wasn't the best of times but since they could sell the house at 3311 Brooklyndell in Dallas for more money than anyone could imagine ($10,000 cash), it seemed the way to go.
Imagine the thrill of an eleven-year old headed for the country with his two dogs, a tom cat and bike. No greater adventure has ever stirred me!
The "family" home was the old Shelton place and since both of Mom's parents had died, the house, barn, chicken coops, garage and the two share-cropper houses suffered from more than just benign-neglect, they were literally falling down!. What must surely have seemed to be one of the best houses in the country at the start of the great depression; after all it had hydrogen-gas lighting from the carbide tank in the backyard, two wells, one for the livestock and one for the house, fruit and nut trees and the outhouse was a two-holer, with its own population of blue flies, had been unloved and unlived in for a number of years.
The front porch was missing a few boards and askew, but was still the best place to put down a pallet in the summer heat. The chimney had an interesting tilt to it; but when the house was releveled by putting bricks on top of the sandstone rocks which supported it; the chimney gave up the ghost and became a pile of bricks.(An early make-work project which paid a penny a brick involved removal of the mortar from the bricks so they could be used elsewhere.) The roof didn't leak, most likely because no one ever remove shingles when houses were reroofed, they just used longer nails and put the new over the old. So the house was dry and contrary to today's problems, termite free. Termites need water and there was none to be found with the house up on the sandstone. It was as dry as a desert underneath. Being in East Texas has a decided advantage when it comes to dealing with termites, roaches, crickets and the like. The climate is just too extreme. When the termites attempt to tunnel for water it may be tens of feet below the surface and just when they think they have adapted, along comes the five years of floods and renders the entire area a swamp with water standing over the roads, the ponds fill to overflowing and they drown. As if that's not enough, in addition to the heat of summer the temperature can hit one-hundred plus for weeks on end. Become comfortable with that and along comes the freezing cold of winter with snow. Come to think of it, why would any man or beast stay in such a place. Seems grasshoppers, ticks and flies are your only companions. And they encounter the designs of man to discourage even them.
Basic design for this house was four square, two rooms on each side of a breeze-way or hall. To the back was affixed a kitchen on one side and a porch on the other. Big double pane windows let light into every room. (Mom said a deer once jumped through one of the windows. Maybe that's just a childhood remembrance?) The hall was open at both ends with screening added, complete with doors, to keep the chickens or whatever out. The two rooms on the south side served as bedrooms and the two on the north side, the living room and dining room.
It didn't take much imagination for Dad to frame in the "entry"; a middle room (which in today's parlance might be called a library or den), a bathroom complete with all the fixings, and a back porch with a built-in pantry connected the kitchen and the other porch. Plumbing and wiring was a snap for whomever Dad hired, since underneath the house was open. There was nothing in the ceiling except perhaps an errant rat or mouse and the inside and outside walls were a single thickness of one by twelves, wallpapered over for appearance sake.
The house is frame. Constructed of heart of pine cut from trees that were probably too large for two men to reach around. Certainly the boards were shipped in as no such stand existed except maybe in the trinity river bottoms. The wood was air dried after being cut to size and is almost free of knots and checks. It can be as hard as oak, and in fact some refer to the wood as hardwood. Once nailed and cleated, the boards resist any attempt to be removed. And, any wood boring insect or animal that attempts to gnaw its way through has its work cut out for it.
The builders selected large field sandstone for the foundation, the house being supported about ever four feet or so on these columns. No cement was used.
Construction at the time these houses were built involved using two-bys for flooring support, and in the ceiling. Otherwise everything was one inch lumber which was nailed and cleated at every point of attachment with at least a half-dozen nails.
For improvement of the interior, drywall was nailed to the walls and the finishing touch was a snake-like plastering painted with a pink or blue pastel color. Since the pine floors had been good enough for the Shelton's, it was good enough for Mom who scrubbed them with lye water and flushed the water through the old holes that were drilled in the corners of the rooms. (Remembering to put a cork back in the hole to discourage mice and bugs.)
One has to have water and it was discovered that the house well had a rock or something in it so that water could not be drawn. And the barn yard well wasn't located in the best of places as years of runoff from the lot had been allowed to wash in. Only thing to do was to get a new well, in the meantime, we carried water from the Cotton's. Since we didn't have a car or truck, the drinking water was carried in one gallon jugs. High priority was to get a new well, which was drilled over two hundred feet deep and a good source of water, except for one problem. If the well lost its prime, water had to be poured into the system until the pipes were full then the jet pump would pick up water from the bottom of the well and you had a stream of water. Where to get the water for this priming, You might guess, jugs of water from the Cotton's or maybe steal it from any available source. (How about that porcelain fixture in house? Well, maybe. Dad was known to improvise.)
With well water, one could get down to the business of being civilized. That meant having an indoor bathroom. Convenience and necessity dictated that the bathroom have two doors (otherwise one would have to detour through the bedrooms or kitchen to go from front to back of the house.) And, the kitchen of course had running water. But along with the addition of water came another problem, what to do with the waste. This was quickly answered again by Dad who saw no reason in digging another hole in the ground and then filling it with concrete and pipes. No, there was the old carbide tank in the back yard that had years ago provided the hydrogen to fuel the inside lighting. It was perfectly serviceable and with only a bit of engineering was made to be a stop for the bathroom waste before it entered the drain field behind the house. For those who haven't had the pleasure of working with septic systems; it is a good idea to provide a grease trap before kitchen waters enter the septic tank. Again, the old carbide system was called into play. In the center of the system was a separate tank which permitted water to slowly drip onto the bed of calcium carbide. Since it had to come out anyway, why not use it for the grease trap? And it was. (Years later, Dad discovered one of the problems with the septic system unbeknownst to most of us. The top he had covered with some spare sheet-iron and dirt gave way. Somehow he managed to fall in and of course, Mom got him out of this fix, much as she did in lots of different circumstances before.)
Now for some heat, well, not quite now. The natural gas line runs just on the other side of the highway in front of the house, and the company was more than willing to have a new customer since natural gas was usually just flared to get rid of it. (When the oil fields were first developed at tricities, some five miles away, it was possible to read a newspaper outside at night, from the flaring gas. Now the oilmen are a bit smarter, they reinject the gas into the wells. Repressuring the old wells with this gas has often caused wells that had gone into decline and shut down to suddenly become productive. Interesting problem for the lawyers, the gas and oil knows no owner other that that who has the well from which the gas and oil emerge. But that's another story.) Anyway, here sits the house not more than one-hundred feet from the gas pipeline, to which the gas company attached a nice new meter to record the sale of gas to the Wortham's. Pipe was purchased and a hole was dug across the road and a jack-type device was used to push a twenty foot section of pipe to which a point had been attached, underneath the road. Another hole directly across was dug as well and all was in readiness. Twenty feet of pipe was pushed under the road and another section of pipe was attached, pushing continued and another section was attached and pushing continued. Now sixty feet of pipe to go under the road was entirely too much, but where did the pipe go? The pipe was withdrawn and pushing started again from another spot. Again without success. The project was abandoned and for another twenty years, natural gas was not an option. (It appears that the Texas Highway Department in specifying that roads should have a substantial base, regardless of use, had the contractor dig down and put in a base of iron ore, followed by a mix of sand and crude oil. Of course this was atop the red clay subsoil which is just one stop removed from being a brick This was well tamped before the asphalt road surface was put in place. Just as this base prevents moisture migration into the road surface, it likewise prevents a puny four inch steel pipe from being driven forty or so feet through it. The pipe was turned and probably headed for China by the time the third section was attached.)
One still needed heat and since the fireplace was gone, this left only one solution; butane. At the time butane was the favored liquid petroleum and propane was simply flared or pumped back into the ground with the methane. Since that time butane has become a more important feedstock for manufacturing and propane is used for all the barbecue tanks, etc., you see in the stores. Butane has one nice feature versus propane, it become liquid at lower temperature or under less pressure so was easy to use. Unfortunately, since it's liquid at about 31 degrees, that means that it isn't a gas when the temperature drops below freezing. So whenever it got really cold, guess what? Lots of liquid butane in the tank but no gas anywhere to be found. That meant it got cold, very cold, since the house being up on blocks and with no insulation in the ceiling, floors or walls quickly took on the same temperature as all of outdoors. This actually happened only about once a year, before the suppliers finally got smart and blended a bit of propane with the butane for winter use.
Considering how the house was not insulated, the only two rooms in the house that were actually warm were the kitchen and the bathroom. The middle room and living room would usually be warm, but not necessarily. Mom and Dad saw little reason to fire up the space heaters in the bedrooms unless guest were coming. (And most guest knew enough to come sometimes other than the dead of winter.) When bedtime arrived, one undressed as quickly as possible and crawled into the feather bed on which a heap of quilts were pilled. After shivering for no more than ten minutes or so, you could be quite comfortable.
Those guest that made it "home" for the holidays had a lot to look forward to and they made Christmas a special time. God bless.
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