The Summer of 1948 meant a big change for me as a five year
old girl. I had no idea what moving meant but I was about to
discover the adventure of it all.

My folks purchased a huge old house and paid $2,200 for it.
An astonishing price at the time ! I had never seen such a big
house. It had a total of 17 rooms including three full sized
rooms in the attic and the same in the basement. There was a
small room that my Dad called a coal bin.

Each Fall my Dad would order two to three ton of coal that
was delivered in dump trucks and it was released through a
coal slide directly into the coal bin. That furnace was our
source of heat for the Winter.

The house had four natural fireplaces complete with massive
mantles above them. My Step-Mom did not like an open fireplace
so she had them sealed and ended with a solid wall in their place.
She kept the mantles and they were always decorated beautifully
according to the season of the year.

We were told that the house was nearly 100 years old when I was
a teen-ager. My Dad had a dormer installed on the back of the
house and the carpenters and brick mason told him the walls were
eighteen inches thick. The wood throughout the house was a solid
cherry with very ornate carvings around the windows and mantles.

As a child, the ceilings looked like they nearly reached the heavens.
They were eleven feet high and the height of the house was four
stories tall.

There was a stunning oval shaped spiral staircase that let you look
down from the attic to the living quarters...two stories below.
My cousin Johnnie and I often slid down on the highly polished railing
as 11 and 8 year old children, being careful to not break any body
parts or get caught by anyone. What wonderful merriment!

My folks made the house into a duplex and rented half of the house
to help meet the payments and for making improvements. We had no
indoor plumbing and carried water from a well each day as well
as using an outhouse.

As I turned eight, we had running water and at ten years, we had
indoor plumbing. What a treat!!! When I turned 14 years old we
had a new fangled contraption called a television set and depending
on where the antennae was turned, we could get as many as three
channels. I felt we had hit the big time.

That old house, though not very pretty on the outside, sheltered us
nicely through my growing up years. I hated cleaning those rooms and
humongous windows but looking back in memory, I recall the beautiful
view of the snow covered mountains, the stunning colors of Autumn
and the brilliant greens of early Spring.

I understand the old homestead still stands with new paint and looking
proud for an old lady of 150 years old.

©Ann Marie Fisher

Midi "Tenderly" performed by Ginger Haydon

The 3 photo's in with the writing is the house Ann wrote about

Click HERE to sign up for our updates