When we moved to our last house in 1969, it was twenty years old. Actually, the main part of the house was that old, but the family room and the two back bedrooms had been carved out of the old garage and tool shed in 1968. No heat or air conditioning. These renovations were the personal work of the dentist who sold us the house. The dentist knew nothing about home improvements, but it took us a while to figure this out. There was nothing behind the paneling, just boards at the top and bottom to nail it to. Oh, and a fuse box that controlled the heater.
The back bathroom was so small I couldn’t go all the way in it until I had a baby, which is why we needed a bigger house. It smelled very odd.
The first time the plumber came, he was amazed to find that the sink had no trap. That’s when we learned that the trap is not just to accumulate debris until it stops up, it’s to trap deadly sewer gas. It hadn’t exploded yet, but we had it changed anyway. We did not yet know how frequent the visits by the plumbers, electricians, and other repairmen would be. We once heard two of them comparing notes about service calls to our house. They would sit around at their offices and pick a number or flip a coin to see who had to come.
1 comment:
It's weird to think about y'all moving to that house. I'm pretty sure you always lived there.
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