HOUSES

We Called Home

C. Allen's life was passed in two places: the offices that spread so wide and the homes that housed his growing family.

Now to the family part of this tale. We have lived in several places as the years, the business, and the Navy took us about. My thought has been that where ever I hang my hat is home. Probably it is fortunate for me that I could feel that way for, although the locales might be different, the basic elements, family and my responsibilities always remain the same. So 'home' has been some unusual places.

I have told of the year that we spent with my parents, of the little house on Forrer where we lived from 1935 to 1937 and of all that was good and that was sorrowful that happened there.

In October of 1937, C. Allen bought the cottage on Lake Orion. It was suggested by the Almdales, who wanted to be certain that any new neighbors in the cottage below theirs were of their own choosing. C. Allen, working for Turner had done work for Midland Steel and Einar Almdale, plant manager. HEC had hired young Einar who brought to C. Allen word of the cottage for sale which was next to the one owned by his parents. The lake was a pleasant one and the senior Almdales hoped that C. Allen would buy. He did and in October we went out to stay for a weekend. The great attraction and probably the strongest selling point of that cottage was the great white pines that filled the property and shaded everything so that little grass grew with many bluebells between and some wild columbine. It was just a cottage, two-by-fours and rough wooden walls, a lean-to kitchen and toilet, one large room with a slight divider and a long porch. Above was one large room which had partial walls dividing it into four bedrooms. It was there that I first met a Michigan basement - a space beneath the cottage with a cement floor and walls of earth, functional but that was all. The conditions which existed when we bought were all right for a short while; soon C. Allen asked George Bery to redesign the cottage, using the established foundations; George did. Local stone mason, Peter Hugel, was hired to finish the outside with the stones in which Michigan abounds - glacial residue. C. Allen, brother Laurencelle, John and Cam hunted for large field stones. Michigan has an abundance of them all brought down from Canada years ago - travelers which had migrated to Michigan. In time that cottage was converted into a livable home. We used the cottage for years for the summer temperature was about ten degrees cooler than that in the town, which made the hour's drive a pleasure of anticipation. The cottage came equipped with a square raft, a row boat which was difficult to handle but practical (One always rowed with one's back facing(?) the direction toward which one was rowing.) and a canoe that had a sail. The raft floated away every spring, had to be found and pushed home; just try pushing a large square object against the surface current while using a backward-rowed boat. The canoe and sail were enticing. That first October, C. Allen, no seaman, took the canoe out under sail, tipped over and came in dripping cold water from the spring fed lake. He asked for dry clothing; it was given. He still complained about the wet and the cold; he had put the dry BVDs on over the wet ones. Later C. Allen, still no seaman, bought a sail boat (Olympic size and style; persistence should have been the name of the boat). Ted Landy had built that boat in the basement of a YMCA as he waited for the time to bring his family up from Ohio. His greatest problem was getting the finished Olympic out of the YMCA basement and into water. He owned no water-front land; so the boat was sold to C. Allen who had such. Sailing that larger boat with the youngsters, C. Allen overturned it. Joyce recalls surfacing under the boat; Father to the rescue. That experience did not create a fear of water; I have often thought about that. We spent weekends and summers there from the end of school to the early days of fall. First few trips out took the necessaries; last trip home was over-loaded with all of the wanted items that had slowly been transported weekly as I came home to buy groceries or to do our laundry. The cottage was eventually furnished so that I had all of the necessities of housekeeping there at all times; that eliminated the need for the weekly taking out and taking home - a great savings of my time.

Winters offered our first skiing experiences; Indianwood Golf Course was just across the lake and there we would slide up and down the gentle slopes on narrow skis. I found it safer to sit on the skis to go down; I did not fall so much. Summer time offered us the opportunity to golf. I tried for a few years but, since I had no grudge against the ball, I could never hit it effectively. It was no great problem when C. Allen decided that I could no longer go to the club without him. I never remember doing so, but... He said that the man operating the club was a drunkard and I was not 'safe' there. Drunk manager or not, it was all right for the boys to caddy there. One did not worry about boys then - today things are different. John may tell you that he was the only one of the caddies who would caddy for Mr. ---- (why mention names?) because that man's leather bag was heavy with the residual water of many rains.

Since our cottage was built in a hollow, a perfect opportunity presented itself to create a unique swing. Fastening a length of steel cable high on one of the trees at the top of the slope, fastening the other end high to a tree near the cottage, hanging a bosun's seat from the wire, and then placing a block in the twist of the cable a distance from the base tree to act as a brake, C. Allen created a swing that used gravity for power. Everybody tried a ride, and everybody enjoyed until Victor Wagner, smallest man of all, slight in built, took his turn and dropped to the ground: he had broken the wire. Rust must have helped that cable disintegrate.

Cottage days were the times that the children from both right and left came to play. Karen Almdale, deaf, came early to help me sort laundry; Kirsten Almdale faced Jim with fear; the only son of the Killians rode a tricycle over the edge of a stone wall. His father scolded and shouted at the boy until I was certain that not all parents should be.

Finally, I declared a vacation from the vacation, for myself. We began spending our summers in Birmingham where there were many activities to attract the family. One's brains need exercise as well as one's body.

We moved December 27, 1937 to the house on Pilgrim in Birmingham; there we remained until May of 1951. They were good years; that was a good house which saw our lives expanding and the family growing in numbers and in age. Large by our old standards, it served us well. A parlor, a bit long for its width (13 by 20) that was a common problem, a sunroom which could be unnecessarily warm in the summer but pleasantly so in the winter, a breakfast room which served as ironing space, a good kitchen that grew in service and complexity as we added an electrical refrigerator to replace the icebox and a dishwasher that became coated inside with the residue of hard Birmingham water (frequent applications of vinegar removed the result), a dining room that always served as such for then the presence of Mattie allowed dinner service there - a pattern which never changed even without Mattie's help. French doors closed off the small entry and powder room, the parlor from the sunroom. Recently when visiting the Flecthers on Mohegan, I have appreciated the usefulness of French doors; then I considered them old-fashioned. The stairway in the central hall led up to a small area that turned into my sewing room; three full sized bedrooms and a small one that became Mattie's room and two full baths. Between the kitchen and the garage door the stairs led down to a full basement with laundry and furnace room. To me it looked like a good play-room; to the children it was a dungeon for the windows were small and high. Now I can understand their point of view. Many years later when we were considering the possibility of buying the Dykstra home and one of her sales points was that there was a large playroom, I knew that it would never do for small children prefer to play right under mother's feet; and a young mother's concept of time is static. There was a two car garage. Before I had my own car, I often pushed Joyce in her buggy the mile into town, packed the necessary groceries in about her and pushed the mile back. It just happened that town was too high on one side of the river and home was too high on the other side. How often at that river, John, Cam and I hung over the railing of the cement bridge playing Pooh Sticks!

One summer, we hung our hats in a cottage on Lake Mendota, Wisconsin. C. Allen was doing the Baraboo Hercules Powder Plant. He and I had traveled in the most modern stainless steel coaches between Birmingham and Madison; he went up on a Sunday evening or Monday morning; I left home Wednesday about noon; we returned Friday - all thanks to Mattie. The decision was made to transfer the family to Madison when school was out; C. Allen rented a cottage by Lake Mendota. What a wonderful cottage it was! The usual rooms except that the enclosed porch, used for dining room, followed proper lines until the wall encountered a great oak tree; the wall simply turned aside and left room for the tree to grow. The furnishings were proper cottage - left overs. The touch, with love, of the owner was evident. The bedroom furniture, vintage early nineteen hundreds, had been painted a soft ivory color. Then began the wonder of patience and paint brush for every mirror and every drawer was embellished with dark green designs: silhouettes from Dickens in one room, Alice in Wonderland in the other with that mirror encircled by a multitude of small figures, toys, trains, shears, lambs, stars and moons connected by sprigs of laurel. The attic of that fascinating place was home for bats and just down the road was the State hospital for the insane - appropriately. Mike Carney, John's friend, came to spend part of the summer with us; later his mother came for a short visit before they went home. It had been a fine idea to move the family to Madison - except that C. Allen spent most of his summer weeks in Michigan and there-abouts all that summer long.

Back in Birmingham, eventually, I had a car for my own use. The garage doors were such that we had to open them manually. It was a repeated chore to clear the snow and ice which piled against them. The Henry J came to that house and found no room in the garage. I was glad we had that flea-green Henry J, for then the boys were able to drive themselves to school. Do you suppose that the boys called the Henry J. 'flea green' because it was such a lousy color? C. Allen had bought it when first Kaiser opened his factory at Willow Run. The garage gave us room for a freezer (the first we owned since we had rented one in Silverdale). One of the neighborhood boys knew that I kept ice cream there, came one day, found no one was home and took a half gallon of ice cream. His mother sent him to return it. He, finding no one at our house, set it on the kitchen door step; summer did the rest. Another time, John came home in time for me to tell him that he had missed the picture of the century: Joe, perhaps 4 years old, booted, holstered and hatted had fallen asleep on the step. There are so many things about childhood that touch the heart and cling in memory. (I can still see that little figure on the step.)

When the Navy years had ended, we, returning, stored many of the shipping boxes in the attic space above the garage until I should have time to empty them. Some neighbor boys had discovered that one could shoot matches from a cap pistol, which would ignite the matches. Old fashioned matches, they bought from the local store with no questions asked. I was in the powder room cleaning a bad wound on a small arm (some child had fallen through the attic's trap door). Another small one said: "Mrs. Harlan, your garage is on fire." C. Allen was home, rushed up into the garage attic and found that one of the matches, projected from a cap gun, had flown through a second-story open window and dropped into an open box. Such a sequence of happenstance! There was fire in that attic; that fire was put out. Now, if I'd been home alone...

C. Allen was a year looking at the property on Adams which he finally bought, knowing that it was time for us to move when the neighbors started complaining about this family's noise level. Then there were eight of us at Pilgrim; there, probably, was a TV turned on which no one was watching, a baseball game going on some-where in the yard or the lot just to our north, and the noise of dinner preparation in the house - open windows in the summer time. I apologized, turned off the TV, hushed the ball game, and could do nothing about the sound of pots, pans. The next night, trying to get to sleep after the heat of the day, lying in bed listening to the neighbor's radio blaring loudly since it was backed against a window pane, listening to them clean up after a party, and hearing the grandmother's penetrating voice, I nudged C. Allen; it was certainly time to move for we had outgrown the house and the neighborhood.

Thirty acres on North Adams was to be the solution of our problems. George Bery was asked to design a house. It should be, according to George, a house designed a la Frank Lloyd Wright to fit into the property, according to C. Allen situated at the top of the rise half way between the property line at the road and the line just beyond the river, according to my Mother closer to the road, and according to Ivabell at the crest of the rise over-looking the stream. That was only the first argument. The house took a year building; I have always had the feeling that C. Allen was only able to pay for it as it developed. At that time the city of Detroit was clearing great areas to make room for the John C. Lodge expressway. There were used bricks and limestone blocks from bank buildings; they became exterior walls and the chimney, the core of everything. I argued that I wanted eye-level windows in the kitchen; I would often spend sixteen hour days in that combination kitchen, laundry and breakfast area. Often out-the-kitchen windows would be the only chance I would have to see the weather, the condition of the snow, the frequency of the rains. C. Allen and George Bery promised that, if I could not manage without the eye-level windows, they could be cut in later. I didn't expect that such a change would ever be made at my insistence; the windows went in as I asked. But there was little else that year that was worth arguing about for Mother was in and out of the hospitals dying of cancer and I was cradling Jeanne.

We were a month moving in; articles would be taken over as the space for them was finished; the laundry man was directed to pick up on Pilgrim and deliver to 3535. Finally the time came when the shirts moved too quickly to the new house; C. Allen at Pilgrim would not have a clean shirt in the morning. We finally made the complete move and finished settling in; C. Allen proudly showed off his new house every time he could find some one to invite to visit - their numbers seemed endless. Summer crept slowly along. C. Allen went off with the Navy to Pensacola; and I was alone (Alone? Jay was 2-; Joe was 4-; Jim was 6, Joyce was 10, Campbell 16- and John not yet 18 - all approx. Mattie was there to help me through a difficult time. Alone? No!); but without C. Allen - yes, alone with my problems. Mother died. Just before the funeral C. Allen came home. Jeanne was born and life continued.

That house was built as George Bery wanted it, long lines against the hillside, clerestory windows or none along the road side, except for the ones which I had decreed. Built into the hillside, the face of the house, over twenty feet high, was mostly glass, double paned plate glass to stop the winter weather which battered from the southwest and frosted the bronze hinges on the family room door. Finished inside with wood, walnut, cherry, maple, oak,- forgiving wood that took the punishment from a busy family and the years and continued to glow with warmth and color. Most of that wood had been harvested by C. Allen's brothers, cured and shipped north; we literally lived in a box; even the ceilings were western cedar. Years later, Gilbert Silverman, entering the Wright-Affleck House, remarked that that house made him think of 3535; indeed the inspiration for 3535 was partially Wright's, partially Bery's, mostly C. Allen's. Some of the oak and walnut floors were finally carpeted to lighten my work. The many coves accepted the burden of holding and housing the pots which came home from Cranbrook and displayed them well. The huge limestone chimney reached up from the family room floor to tower above the roof. It housed two fireplaces, one for the parlor and the larger one for the family room. Both fireplaces were well used for the acres supplied the wood. Beyond the fact that we were living in a box, there were many features which made the house exceptional and many of those exceptional features were copied. The combination kitchen/breakfast-room/and laundry saved steps. When Mother first saw the size of the kitchen area with nothing to indicate its organization other than our word that it was the kitchen, she, remembering old farm kitchens, was alarmed and concerned about the walking I would have to do in the course of a day. The wall which separated the kitchen area and the dining room was especially designed to have deep drawers which would open both directions and above them, glass enclosed, a display area for the collection of ivory, etc. (The 'etc.' came as the interests of the family changed and the children added items of their own selection.) From the kitchen down the bedroom wing of the house there extended some sixty feet of closets, all a bit over five foot high, glass covered and having glass shelves. At Christmas time with curious children and so many packages to conceal until that special date, the top of those closets became the place to 'hide' packages, or to use my term 'hide them out loud'. They could be seen, touched, rattled and pinched; they could not be opened. It was a good house; it worked well for me.

People came as guests, seldom in ones or twos. One young woman walked into the parlor, took an overview and decided that we did our own interior decorating. She was right. Interior decorating was a continuing process of change and development; it was our home. The wood accepted any color; the space allowed for many pieces of furniture and accommodated many hobbies. It was a good house; it did work well for me.

And often I was alone with out the help of the extra hands which I needed. C. Allen maintained that it was my fault for not making the children do a good portion of the work. They had put in their eight hour day at school and still had homework and reading to do each evening; just as he had put his hours in at the office with the extra time demanded of an entrepreneur (his eight hour days were most erratic). With good grades, the children earned their free time. Try calling an employment agency and tell them that you need help and that there are seven children in the family. It takes time to learn that a woman can do only so much with two hands, with the two hands on the clock to mark her day no matter what the pay.

Thirty acres was for city dwellers a lot of land. The Pauleys (he was an H.E.C. field superintendent) bought two acres and built a house there. Ten acres of land were later sold to the school district; Pauley, piqued because he did not want a school for a neighbor, sold his land back to C. Allen; today John and Beth live in that house which has been altered to fit their growing family. On the remaining acres, C. Allen planted; his goal was to plant one of every tree that would grow in Michigan, except that he never did plant things in 'ones', never in dozens, always in hundreds. I think that he did have at least one of every thing that would grow in Michigan. After he had any thing in the ground and it had grown for several years, he unplanted, giving his trees to whomever would agree to participate in the labor of replanting; there were always takers. Matter of fact, one dinner time we watched as a neighbor boy dig up and cart off a tree from near the river; no permission requested. Often I would have a phoned 'thank-you' from a neighbor who had heard that C. Allen did not mind if you took one and planted it on your own property - they had. Those phone calls generally came from neighbors who were trying to call someone else, not this Mrs. Harlan. One of the owners of Top of the Troy building told me of his coming home, going into his house and complaining to his wife that there was a man in the front yard digging up a tree; 'no' Suzy Farbman replied 'that is Mr. Harlan and he is planting it.' He told of their moving after that and of taking the little dogwood with them. C. Allen gave away so many trees that eventually friends, seeing him coming, moved to the opposite side of the street; they had no more space in which to plant.

That river was a pleasure, was a menace. Spring thaw always sent it racing along its course. One spring I chased off boys who had decided that they wanted to white water raft down its length; not on my bit they wouldn't. Another time, C. Allen had bridged the river with a scaffold so that he could reach that land which we called the island. With left over brick he tried to build a wall which would give the island and its trees a bit of protection from each spring's raging waters; the water simply swept his wall down. Young Jim tried crawling over that scaffold when the waters were rushing close to the metal. Half way over, I called him back. Looking back on that excursion today, it was as dangerous coming half way back as it had been crawling half way over; but finally he was on my side and safe. What would he have done on the cold and drowned side of the river?

There were times when the river was completely placid - frozen in midwinter. The neighbors and my own children continually tested the ice to see when it was safe for skating. The first snows always brought out the sledders who filled the hillside to the north of the house. Some did go down and end up in the river; then there was a shivering phone call home for mother to 'come, bring a blanket and take me home'. When the pond was frozen, those were the days, children would start at the top of the hill, to the north or to the south of the house, sweep down the hillside and out unto the pollywog puddle (deepened remnants of the old swamp). Every year C. Allen had to take the tractor down onto the ice; and, invariably, every year he and the tractor went through. Maybe the boys can tell you how they got that tractor out; I do not know.

Discussion of any house is not complete without mention of the plumbing, heating, roof, and, in today's world the plans for parking peoples' cars. (Never buy any building without first having checked those items; repairs are expensive.)

Heating - aside from the two fireplaces, the chimney, which made room for them, was the flue for the furnace, a huge old-fashioned monster that sat in the far north east corner of the house, as far from the very last bedroom as was possible. The results were as expected - it was difficult to force any heat to that last bedroom. At one time Helmut Krippendorf had all of the hot water pipes and valves, which were intended to furnish warmth to all rooms, changed so that the direction of water flow was changed. After C. Allen's death, I discovered just what had to be done to get some heat to the south end of home; the man who delivered the oil told me what and where the aquastat was. So I would set the aquastat to near the boiling point; then, when the last bedroom was comfortable, so was the rest of the house and I could turn the thing down until late afternoon; another burst of power and the house was warm for the evening and comfortable for the night.

C. Allen had installed a huge tank to hold the furnace oil south of the house in the hill side. The delivery trucks came; made their deliveries and sent the bill. Unbridled neighbor children, fascinated by the pipes which protruded from the under ground tanks, dropped pine cones, etc.; I supposed the oil splashed. At any rate the smaller pipes to the house became clogged. During the summer of 1960, while the family was away on vacation, Marathon Oil installed a temporary tank - like many temporary things it became permanent, at least for my time. That was the fall and winter when we noticed an unusual number of mice about the house. Sitting one evening in the parlor reading, fire on the grate, Joe said: "There is a mouse." Did it come out of the fire place? Was it on fire? There was another. Two or three of them played along the ridges of the limestone. We looked into that problem for no one wanted a visitation of mice. Where the men, installing the temporary tank, had led their feed pipes into the house was a neat round hole, larger than any mouse. The creatures needed no further invitation. Steps were taken and the mouse problem was eliminated -- for that time. An earlier infestation was surely my fault. When building, I had asked for warm flooring in the family room. The cement floor was firred up, plywood placed on top and C. Allen had carefully filled the four inches between with vermiculite. Perfect! All any enterprising mouse had to do was find an entry by way of a heating pipe, shoulder its way into the vermiculite - instant home. Then there was the year that we had some of the queerest mice. In 1958, the Drummonds had house-sat for us. Son Bobby was allowed white mice; son Bobby grew tired of white mice; they were released to mix and blend with the native crop of field mice - pie-bald mice! Then there was the time that Jim, having left the dinner table, opened and closed the front screen and told me that he had let the mouse in. Indeed, he had. We watched. Campbell saw it go into the powder room (obviously a female mouse). He followed it, then came out to tell us that he had caught the mouse under the waste paper basket. 'Now, what do I do?' I handed him a cookie sheet to slide under the basket; then he would have the mouse. 'Now, what do I do?' Father said 'drown it'; Campbell said 'I can't'. Upshot was that he took the basket out and let the mouse go to start another generation of invaders. What a story it had to tell!

The plumbing, Allen had installed with the help of a plumber. The distance from the furnace and water heater to the bedrooms meant warm water only after a long time of coaxing. That was finally changed, after C. Allen's death, when the husband of my niece, came to replace all of the leaking galvanized piping with copper. He reversed the flow of water by taking the hot water from the bottom of the tank; that shortened the forever wait time. As in every house, piping had been taken to the outside of the house for the use of hoses. One time, I was busy vacuuming up dead honey bees in a window corner of the family room. Another time, Jim found the library area filled with the insects trying to get out. The bees had removed the packing around a pipe, settled in the walls, and then following the heating pipes had emerged into the house. I packed those holes; but persistent bees, after their honey, worked their way back in. We struggled. Inspecting the other faces of the house, I found a spot in the mortar that yellow jackets (What a sting they have!) had removed and invaded. Such is the life of the rural wife. I wonder if there is still honey in those walls.

The roof was like the usual factory roof, an up and down affair that was tarred and covered with stones. The changing temperature affected the seals at every seam; water would enter, follow a joist, and then drip to my dismay. Every spring and every fall, C. Allen took the hot tar to the roof and sealed. With him gone, I was not about to try that process myself, so I called in a roofer. Six years later, I had not had another leaking roof seam. New materials make a world of difference.

As an after thought a fruit room had been added to the house - just backed on to the outer wall and covered completely. The springs in the hill side were much lower than the house. The house was at least thirty feet above the river. I had water covering the fruitroom floor every time that it thawed or rained - sealants then were not what they are today. That room leaked where its walls met the house. There was water in what should have been a dry basement.

These days of limited public transportation, every family that lives beyond walking distance from whatever, has to have car and willing drivers. George Bery had designed a carport because Father had had enough of opening and closing garage doors. The ideal situation was to drive under cover and then drive straight out. The carport was large enough to cover three good sized cars or four small ones. C. Allen could, in every instance, drive into an empty carport with his Pinto and make it impossible for anyone else to park a completely covered car there. The carport and the long driveways accentuated the problem of snow removal. C. Allen trusted the Lord. He had put it down; He would take it away; He did - every May. We all learned to drive in deep snow.

Summer time was sheer delight for we had a meadow that turned into a parking lot for the many visiting cars. One party, John and Cam parked cars for the guests. They discovered that the fancy cars belonged to the climbers; that the real money came in an ordinary car slightly gussied up. Good lesson. That meadow was parking lot, baseball diamond, archery range, and driver training area. The little Corvair was the only car with steering wheel and pedals which Jay and Jeanne - I have forgotten their age then - could reach. The first week that it was home, it traveled some three hundred plus miles from the house to the barn, turned around in the meadow and back to the house, back to the barn; the tractor, with older drivers, had done the same thing as huge forts of snow had been piled up for winter fun.

With hillsides gushing springs, there was only one thing to do - build a swimming pool. Neither George Bery nor C. Allen knew what they were doing; they built a pool with as many problems as it had pleasures. The first visitors were my family come for a reunion; everyone had brought a suit to wear for a swim in that unfinished pool - no apron, just walls, floor and water. The Landa's son David, small and no swimmer, immediately dropped out of sight and later boasted: he had been walking on the bottom. Each spring brought the chore of recaulking the pool; every summer brought screams of delight for the grandchildren learned to swim there, to dive and to thoroughly enjoy. Grandfather liked having the whole pool to himself after five o'clock; so we emptied the pool of people and gave it to him. Of course there were other visitors. We might come home to find little bare backs disappearing into the shrubs and trees on the west side of the pool. An aluminum fence went up to no avail; Joe replaced it with a board fence of one by twelve planks. The boys in the neighborhood took them down, and, a few at a time, threw them into the river, creating an unwanted dam. Greatest pleasure of all was to be almost asleep and hearing Campbell and his friends, tip-toeing around the end of the house, hushing one another because the family was asleep and then screaming as they hit the ice-cold water.

That house is still filled with the ghosts of many memories of children's laughter, of boy voices deepening to manhood's, of sibling rivalries, of younger years contending with the older, of Campbell's breath of delight as he opened the kitchen door to follow the odor of baking bread, of John's clear two-toned whistle, of Sembach's strong whistled notes, of piano lessons drilled and forgotten, of C. Allen's demanding entry call of 'Ivabell'. The house, too, has changed until it is as it was only in memory.

Now I have moved again, this residue of the original pair - I am alone for C. Allen died the last of June, 1972. I, under a variety of pressures, have sold 3535 and moved into this paper palace. Paper palace? Actually it is well built, considering the conditions of other condominiums. I paid the price of a palace for a creation of papier mache and glue; in twenty-five years it will give a sigh and self-destruct. By that time I will be gone for I have sworn that I should be the first thing boxed and moved from this unit on Timberview Trail. I have brought many of the special things from 3535, adjusted to my new living conditions and started the last years of my life doing things which I could never do before. For so many years I was, of choice, a 'we' person, feeling for nine, thinking for nine, knowing before each child knew what he would be doing in the next five minutes, rejoicing with each accomplishment, consoling each defeat. Being nine people was demanding; now I have my rewards.

(1988 - John has told me that he met a man named 'Voss' who now lives in 3535. Wilson, buyer and architect, had covered with wall board all of the wood and had taken down the wood of the ceilings. Mr. Voss was delighted to learn that the walls beneath were of cherry, walnut, and oak, that the parlor/library floor was walnut. He wanted to know what some of the light switches turned on for there were no proper reactions to the flipping of some the switches. I know but I'm not telling.)