Houses I Have Loved 3

Today is Monday, March 31, 2008. It is the very last day of March. The sun is just barely showing through the trees.
And here I go talking about another house. Before we moved to California we lived in Magna, Utah, near the Great Salt Lake. This was a house on the corner with two lots. There was a full basement - such a wonderful place. Finding each house we have lived in has been an adventure and this was no exception. Glen had been assigned a teaching position there and we started our foray into searching for a house. Our plan was always to get a newspaper and start checking out the ads. We weren't into getting a real estate agent at this point in our lives. We had 4 young children and renting seemed to be out of the question in this area. We wanted to be close enough to Glen's work that he could walk and close to the school for the children.
We drove onto one street and Glen pulled into the first driveway and turned around. "I couldn't live on this street," he said. "Every house looks exactly alike and I wouldn't like that." It was true, every house did look alike and each had a small tree planted in the same spot in the front yard.
We located his work place, and the elementary school, and the Church - our three important landmarks and drove up and down each street. On the corner across from the Church there was a empty house. No kind of a sign anywhere we could see. The windows were boarded up and the weeds were waist high.
We parked, climbed out of the car to look around in the yard and to try to peek into windows at the back which were not boarded up. It all looked so interesting. The yard was two lots with a small shed to the back - probably the original garage for the old house. The house was right at the corner with a small hedge on the two street sides. There was a 6 foot hedge down the front on the other side of the driveway to the next lot. There were several fruit trees in the yard and lots of space where a big garden had been. Magna had irrigation water and the water ditch ran through the back.
Lo and behold! In one of the back windows was a sheet of tablet paper with a name and a phone number on it. The paper didn't say for sale - just the name and number. We went to the nearest pay phone (this was in the days before cell phones) and tried the number. The man who answered told us that he worked at the Bank in town and really wasn't ready to sell the house yet. He said he would meet with us however and tell us what he hoped to do before the house was put up for sale.
Needless to say, we talked him into selling the house just as it was and we began the move-in process. Glen still had some summer schooling to complete in Provo where we lived but we were ready to move the family in and he could commute for his last classes. The boarded up windows in the front room had been broken by school children passing by, throwing rocks. Once that happened the owner had boarded up a big window on the front and some of the back windows nearest the street.
Our first project was to take the boards off the existing windows and arrange for new windows to be put in to replace the broken ones. We packed up our belongings in Provo and planned to use the weekend to get all set up in the new house. The weekend was sunny and beautiful and we were all eager. Saturday we accomplished a lot of work, got the boxes moved in. The electricity was still on but the gas had been turned off. We could make the arrangements on Monday. It was just like camping out for a few days and we were all excited. The children, of course, loved it and "Mom" was fine about it. She could play like a pampered pioneer for a few days. (I've always loved an adventure.)
Sunday went well because of previous planning and then Sunday evening it got really cold. The fireplace they had used for cooking would now be necessary to keep at least the front room warm until they could get the gas turned on. Barbara would take care of that on Monday because Glen had to drive back to Provo for school. The plan of action worked. The gas was turned on and they were all cozy in their new house.
The full basment was two big open rooms with a smaller storage room for food and other stuff. The furnace and the water heater sat right in the middle of the big space and acted as the divider. Since the windows were above the ground the basement was very light. It was the favorite place in the house those first few days. (And, come to think of it, all the rest of the time we lived there.)
The kitchen was the biggest room in the house with plenty of room for the dining table under the window. There was a small bedroom at the back and a large bedroom with a big window at the front. The bathroom was between the two bedrooms with a small hall. There were several decisions to be made. Who would occupy what bedrooms? Of course, Mom and Dad would have the large room. None of the children at that stage wanted to have a bedroom by themselves so all four had the other bedroom. Over time, Mom and Dad partitioned off a bedroom for themselves in the basement and the children had the upstairs bedrooms. While we lived there we had two more children - a boy and a girl. The two boys had the back bedroom and the four girls had the front bedroom.
We also built a bathroom in the basement. Oh, boy! That was a project, breaking up the concrete of the basement floor to put in the drain and the toilet! That's a story for another time. But once we got it all in, it was a great basement. We had a large play area with the TV, a nice storage room, a lovely large bedroom and a new bathroom. The washing machine and dryer were downstairs, too, with the ironing board. (That is back in the days when I was still ironing white shirts that Glen wore for teaching every day. I often watched TV while I ironed.)
The kitchen had nice windows and was a pleasant place to work. I remember that I used to section off the floor and have the children help me mop it. I'd mark the sections with white shoe polish and we would all go to work. They thought it was great sport slopping the water around. Sometimes it would have been easier to do it all myself but I wanted them to learn to work. (It all paid off in the long run.)
The front room was really like a parlor because the TV was down in the family room. We had our couch (that has it's own story), our overstuffed chair, and our piano (another story). The fireplace took up one wall and we had bookshelves and tables to take up the rest of the space. Because of the basement room for playing and crafts the front room always looked nice. I started giving piano lessons once we got all settled in and I needed the front room to set the right tone.
The shed was a great place to store all the needed yard equipment - the lawn mower, rakes, shovels, hoes, wheel barrow and such stuff. And the children loved to climb up onto its roof. We planted a big garden with a border of mums and other flowers. The apricot trees produced abundantly and our cherry tree was a great delight. It was those little sour cherries that make such good cherry pie. We planted pumpkin and squash vines along the irrigation ditch and one year a vine grew up into a neighboring tree and we had a huge squash hanging in the tree until we finally decided it was big enough to pick and use.
This house in Magna had a nice front porch along with all its other good features. What more could I ak? A big basement, a front porch, a fireplace and a wonderful kitchen.
We lived there for five years and enjoyed all the things that our wonderful house had to offer. And we loved the big yard and the great garden area.
That's it for today.