I’m the little guy holding the pug. Her name was Ladybelle, and she was very spoiled! The other dogs are Laddie (black and white dog) and Queenie. None of these dogs was ours, though Laddie, my grandmother’s dog, claimed us.
The rest of the people are my two sisters and my brother.
The maple tree still grows in the front yard, though it was struck by lightning one year and looks pretty rough.
The house is the one my mother and father built from lumber they salvaged from an old US Army Air Corps base warehouse. Another couple helped them tear it down, and both built homes with the salvaged lumber.
The family lived there for 51 years, then sold the house when all of us were too beat up to handle the responsibilities of a home and yard. I miss the garden, but that’s all!
That’s awesome that he built his own house. I wish I could do that. My grandgather probably could have. He got hold of a load of the same kind of brick his house was made of, then laid the foundation for a patio and bricked it up. When he was done you couldn’t tell the difference. Looked like it had been there from the beginning.
The skills he had came from working on the bridge and building crew at the railroad when he was a young man. Of course, as a perfectionist, too, things tended to get put together and put together well. I don’t have anything like his skills that way, and my rare attempts at carpentry are, um, “interesting”!
Awww… what a lovely memory. It is incredible that two families decided to tear down one structure to make a home for their family. You do not see much of that any longer! The work involved in just tearing down one structure is enough but then to build a home too is simply incredible! I love pictures as they tell such a grand in-depth story to the person to whom it means the most. All pictures tell a tale but we usually are only privy to what our eyes can see instead of what our heart can feel. Thank you for sharing.
My pleasure! Mom and Dad had four of us children by the time they built the house, and we were all crammed in an apartment on the top floor of my grandmother’s house. I can’t imagine the living arrangements because there was a bathroom, a small kitchen, a living room, and another (small) bedroom, where I guess we kids all slept. I have no memory of that, so should ask my siblings, all of whom are older than me. I may have slept in my parent’s room since I was a baby or toddler when they started work on the house. I would have been barely three when we moved into the new house. There, the girls shared a bedroom and the boys shared another one. At one point, when I was in the second grade, I was sick with mumps and measles, one after the other. My brother moved into a room in the basement that Dad updated so he had a bedroom out of it. I got to have the boys’ bedroom to myself, then, and my brother had a bedroom that was as large as the girls’ and boys’ bedrooms together. I don’t think the girls had a problem with their arrangement, but I never asked them about it or remember anything ever being said about it.
It is amazing what we find when we stroll down memory lane. Your parents must have been terribly worried with two horrible childhood illnesses back to back. That must have been one of the worst times in your childhood. Even with the silver lining, the hell your body had to traverse paid for it!
I don’t recall it being so bad because I got to stay home and I got new books and toys out of it. Of course, at one point the school work backed up and the teacher sent it over to me to work on at home so I wouldn’t get so far behind.
Sweet photo and wonderful memories.
Ah, growing up in the 50’s – nice time, eh?
I think so…what I remember of it, anyway!
Very nice family photo. How impressive that your Dad built the house from salvaged lumber.
Thanks! Mom and Dad not only built the house in their spare time, they had me under foot while they did it!
Great family photo, Doug. People were (and still are) very resourceful, using whatever was available to build a home.
A spoon fed pug! Love it! I have some more photos of the Three Sisters cats posted.
I’ll have to check your blog out, then! Anyway, after WWII, the air base property was sold to the city and the city sold off some of the warehouses as surplus. The wood was high quality and well-aged. There were no cracks in the plaster in that house for all the time we were there, 51 years, it was so solid and well-constructed.
Now all that lacks is the sentence: They do not build houses like this anymore 😉
That’s a fact! Of course, aide from Dad’s skill at building, people building their own home may have an incentive not to take short cuts builders sometimes do.
My garage/shop used to be the old owner’s parents house. The damp winters here are hard on wood structures, but it is basically sound and slowly getting a face lift, with new windows, etc..
It took me a while to see Queenie. What a lovely family photo.
She was a nice dog, as were the other two!
Wow they built the house themselves, that’s quite something, though I know it was often the only option back then. What a great photograph, a beam of light into the past *smiles*.
– sonmi upon the Cloud
It was the fastest way to have a home of their own. Dad was a pretty good carpenter and cement guy. When the city engineer came to verify Dad’s work was up to city code, he determined the difference between the highest corner of the basement wall and the lowest was 1/4 inch! Dad was a perfectionist. Plumbing and electrical work he had done, as well as the cabinets in the kitchen, though he could have made cabinets as good as those were.
I love a little bit of family history. Pugs are adorable! You must be in the same age bracket. Kind of reminds me of a house we lived in in “Pleasant Heights” Colorado. We were on the prairie in south eastern Colorado. Forty miles to the nearest store, and it was on a piece of land with a church my dad pastored, a parsonage, and a one-room schoolhouse.
Ladybelle belonged to two little girls. She wouldn’t eat her food unless you fed it to her a spoonful at a time. I “babysat” her one week when her family went on vacation, and I was soooo happy when they came home. As sweet as Ladybelle was (and aren’t pugs little comedians!?), it took forever to feed her. I just turned 67.
I just turned 62 – not that much difference at our ages. 😀
Once you get up in that age range, those five years are nothing, like you say!
You two make this crazy old cat lady feel young again – I am “just” 46 😛
I thought the 40s were a pretty good decade, but the 50s were even better! Enjoy!
Well, you are male. I can assure you, it is slightly different for a woman.