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Because it was warm outside,
all I had to do was open the window on the back wall of the bedroom
and toss the huge pieces of cardboard out into the back yard.
In opening the window, I realized it had no counter-weights to
hold it up.I had to stick a piece of wood from the former closet
in the frame to hold the bottom pane up so I could dispose of
the cardboard. Discovery number two, none of the windows had
counter weights. I had never lived in a house with windows like
that. I didn't realize at the time that it was probably due to
one of two reasons. The people who built the house were either
too poor to put the weights in, or maybe too stupid. A third
possibility was that the house was built before they used counter-weights,
but that was beyond my scope of knowledge or comprehension at
the time.
Totally ignorant about early
building techniques and the value of some aspects of the old
house, I made a few rather nasty comments as I tried to clean
the upstairs floors. Cracks between the wide boards made it impossible
to dust them with the traditional dust mop. The strands of the
mop kept getting snagged on square head nails that had worked
slightly upward and on the rough edges of some of the boards.
Some of the cracks were also repositories for dirt, not dust,
dirt. The only way to clean them was to use a sweeper with a
narrow attachment so I could pull the dirt from between the boards.
A third major discovery-an old house wasn't going to be as easy
to clean as a newer one. Years and years of dirt had worked down
into the cracks and crevices of my old house and I might never
be able to make it look as clean and shiny as a newer home.
The downstairs had secrets to
reveal, too. Almost more than I could take in one day, but I
had to finish because we were moving in the following weekend.
A small cupboard under the sink almost did me in. Thinking I
would have a cupboard to keep cleaning items in, I opened it
and found that it was the chief residence of those who intended
to share our new abode. Mouse droppings coated the bottom shelf,
and I almost sat on the floor and cried. What would I do with
all my "stuff"? Deciding not to give in to my inclination
to beat my head against the wall, I got a pencil and a pad of
paper and sat in the middle of the kitchen floor to make a list
of things I needed to get in order to clean the kitchen properly.
Putty knife, ammonia, disinfectant, and mouse traps. I laid the
pad on the floor and put the pencil beside it, then made a trip
to the necessary room.
When I came back, I made my
fourth major discovery, quite by accident. My pad was where I
had left it, but the pencil was gone. Had the furry little beasts
carried it off? I was not losing my mind. Then I spied it over
against the wall. Knowing I had laid it by the pad, I was a little
curious as to how it got over by the wall, so I put it on the
floor and watched as it slowly rolled toward the wall again.
The floor was bowed up in the center and went down on the sides.
Great fun for my son with his little cars, but what about our
appliances? How could they sit level if the floor was that out
of kilter? Visions of slanted bottles in the refrigerator flashed
before my eyes. No wonder the table had been directly in the
middle of the room when we toured the house. Inspecting the floor
a little more carefully, I noticed a very large crack between
the sill of the outside door and the floor, possibly as wide
as a quarter of an inch. Maybe the little furry creatures had
their own special entrance. But was I discouraged, not me. It
was my house now, not theirs, the mice that is.
The last room I cleaned was
the one behind the bathroom, the one that would have to be used
as my laundry room. This room had a very large cupboard, and
I was just sure it would hold all my supplies and maybe even
serve as a linen closet. It was right beside the fireplace that
practically filled the back wall and across from the furnace.
Major discovery number five. The mice lived here, too. There
was also an assortment of home canned foods in mason jars, well
past usable prime, filling this cupboard. Cart out the moldy
canned goods, come back with the putty knife and ammonia, and
remember to save a trap for this cupboard.
As I was getting ready to leave
for the day, I heard a noise that had occasionally distracted
me during my cleaning frenzy, and I decided to locate the source.
It came from every room in the house, but wasn't constant. It
was almost like a gentle tapping or knocking. I might be willing
to fight with the mice to take control of my new home, but I
wasn't about to tangle with ghosts. Standing in the middle of
one of the two front rooms, I made a rather interesting discovery
and one that dispelled any fear of ghosts. Every time the wind
blew, even gently, the windows rattled. It wasn't something knocking;
it was air rushing in between the upper and lower sashes of the
windows. The old place was certainly well ventilated, my next
to last discovery of the day.
My last discovery was made as
I sat in my car; ready to call it quits for the day. Looking
at my old house, my new home, I was filled with the strangest
sensation that the house appreciated what I had done, that it
was happy someone cared. I think that's when the love affair
began. Our old house needed us, and we needed it. That was almost
forty-four years ago, and while it has been sorely tested over
those years by discoveries that there was no heat in the upstairs
and other assorted unique features, love affair continues with
the same degree of warmth and caring as it did that long ago
day in October.
>> Part 3 of "The House That Became Part Of A Family" |
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