Houses I Have Loved 2

Today is Saturday, March 22, 2008. The sun is shining and the sky is blue.
Before we moved to this house we lived in Bakersfield. And what a place that was to love! We moved there in 1970 because of a job transfer for Glen. We were living in Magna, Utah, when we received word of the transfer. Lo and behold, a close friend in Magna had an aunt and uncle who lived in Bakersfield. She told her aunt and uncle about our change and one day we got an interesting phone call. Just around the corner from Aunt Fern and Uncle Art there was a place for sale.
Glen couldn't get away from school to go look at it right at the time. He decided that I should go. We had three children not yet in school and my mother lived next to us in her beautiful house trailer. She would go with me and we would drive to Bakersfield to check out the place. Then Glen decided that he would like to have his Dad see the place, too. And Dad and Mother Wahlquist agreed to make the trip with me as the driver. Mother, the children and I left Magna in the morning. Stopped in Toquerville to pick up Dad and Mother Wahlquist, spent the night at their place and headed out to California the next morning.
It was a fun trip. All were happy travelers. We even had an additional passenger named Maggie - a moth that had gotten into the car at some point and the children decided to name her. Maggie stayed with us clear to California.
We were to stay with Fern and Art while we checked out the place that was for sale. I had been a bit disappointed that Glen felt his parents should be with us. After all, I thought I could make a wise decision concerning a place to live. But, oh my, how my opinion changed when we went to check out the property at 3737 Eucalyptus Drive! I was so glad that Dad was along to get the man's point of view.
The place was an acre lot. There were two houses, an 8 car garage that opened onto the alley, a big garage with an office beside it, and a 10' X 12' shed. The place was owned by Mrs. Turner. Mr. Turner, who had been in the tile business for years in Bakersfield, had died and Mrs. Turner wanted to be free of the place. To me it seemed like a fabulous estate. I knew I had to be sensible about it. Would it work for us? We trooped through the two houses and explored the sheds and walked all around.
We asked all the important questions. How about the utilities? How about the taxes? Had it had a termite inspection? Etc. There were lights all over the yard for security reasons. The whole property was surrounded by a chain link fence. Dad and Art talked about all the pros and cons from a practical standpoint.
The evening of the first day I called home to report what we had found. I was excited and tried to describe everything in detail. As I described it as best as I could, Glen asked me one question, "How will it look if my boss were to drive by?" I started laughing. "He wouldn't be able to see much?" was my reply. The front and the side fences had pomgranate and euyonmous bushes at least 6 feet high so the houses were barely visible from the road.
We spent several days with Fern and Art and went over to the property many times each day. I couldn't remember exactly how the bedrooms were or how the kitchen was in comparison to the other rooms. It was just so much to take in.
We were excited about the two houses. Mother could live in one. She would sell her trailer house and we would sell our house in Magna. She really had no reason to stay in Magna if we were in California.
Finally all the necessary paper work was done and we headed home with a place to move to in the summer while school was out. Glen had to go to summer school in Provo for part of June and July. We moved Mother to Bakersfield in early June. Two of our older children would stay with her while the rest of us lived in college housing until July. I don't know all of Glen's thoughts when he first saw the place but he soon fell in love with it as I had. And the children - well, it was quite a child's paradise.
The house seemed big to me. And there were big windows on two sides of the front room. That was an addition to the original small house. The addition went all across the back and around the side of what had been a one bedroom house - kitchen, front room/dining room combo/ bedroom and bath. The new part was a step down from the old house. It included the new front room plus a huge bedroom and a screened in porch. Originally the front door had been at the north. With the add on, the front door was now in the south.
There were beautiful mosaic tile walkways everywhere - from the main house to the smaller house, out to the garage and to the front gate, out to the sheds and all around the house. Neigbors told us that if Mr. Turner didn't have a tile job somewhere, he put his crew to work at his house making the walkways so they would not go to work for someone else. The sheds still had tiles of all sorts and shapes and marble - just scraps - not enough of any one kind to do a job. But it was all very interesting and the children found many ways to play with the various pieces of tile.
The kitchen was right in the center of the house. There was a window opening over the sink which looked into the front room. (It had been the original window-over-sink looking outside, but kept in the design of the added on part.) We decided right off that we wanted a window from the kitchen into the dining area. First thing, Dad and Glen had the saws out to create that opening. Glen built a wonderful round table to fit the spot under the new opening and the kitchen was not so isolated. The kitchen and dining room were of knotty pine. I had a double oven installed and the cook top was a Corning Ware one. The dishwasher was a portable one. Glen redid the lower cabinets to make bins for flour and the 100 lb. bag of powdered milk we always kept on hand. There was a fireplace in the east wall of the dining room along with bookshelves from floor to ceiling on one side of the fireplace.
The front room had a nice cupboard right next to the window opening and beside that was another bookcase. The bedrooms - let's see, can I even remember how they first were? The old bedroom was big, had a walk-in closet with a window. The "new bedroom" was L shaped and separated from the front room by French doors.
We made more changes in the house over the years. We added a second bathroom, removed the French doors and created a wall for what became the master bedroom and partitioned off part of that room to make a small third bedroom. The boys had the small bedroom, the girls had the original bedroom and we had our big bedroom with big windows on two sides. It was a great place.
The yards and sheds were great for everything. Glen had his wood shop. We fixed a cold storage room for all of our canning and food storage. The children used the old office as a craft room. What used to be the marble shed we used for storage of all sorts.
There were two big carports for the cars - we now had two - and for our trailer for hauling all kinds of stuff.
In the center of the side yard there was one big tree with a circle of bushes around it where the children spent hours at play, hidden away from everyone. And there were all kinds of places to have games and hide aways.
Mother's house was not small. The washing machine and dryer hook-ups were over at her place. She had a lovely front room with lots of windows, a small kitchen, a small dining room, a nice sized bedroom, and a smaller bedroom plus a large screened in porch and a nice bathroom. It was great.
Well, needless to say, it was very hard to move from that place after 22 years. But when we were asked to go to a new place, we felt that we should do it. We have never regretted any move we have made. Even though it is hard to leave a place you have learned to love. There is so much to tell about that place. I'm sure you can't see it as we did but it will always have a strong place in our hearts. Before we moved we all took lots of pictures of every area about the place. Sometimes I nearly cry when I look at them. I've added it to Houses I've Loved.