Historical Interest

It is not often that a person has the chance to look into the lives of people who lived 90-100 years ago but this week during our excursion into the un-named depths of the Ashland attic-quarium we had just such an encounter.
I don't know what people used for medicine in 1922, but here we found a prescription on a bottle from that time. I found several medicine bottles with 'poison' marked on a label on the neck, but the prescription not readable. The label reads: "Dr. John Lance" "Mr. Tom Dailey:-" "Add one-half warm water and gargle every three hours." "3-4-1922-E" "The Muller Drug Co." "The Rexall store" "Ashland, NE"


Also we found what I would describe as an early form of micrometer. It is metric and it measures accurately within the limits of the markings. This has no real value but if you want it send me a few couple bucks for shipping and its your piece of history.









Lastly, perhaps some of you will recall the good old days of mail order household items. Here we have a selection from 1933, a full printing of the 'Zanol' catalogue. Herein you can find just about anything your heart desired, from powdered amonia (25c/box), to emulsified pine tar shampoo (50c/6oz), to one of my favorite Zanolax-the candy laxitive (25c/30 tablets). "Eaten like a piece of candy, it relieves biliousness, torpid liver, sick headache and dyspepsia caused by constipation. Positively non-griping, and so gentle in its action that it may be given to very young children-even those under school age-with absolute safety."

An interior Before tour, AKA: What were we thinking again?

This week we closed a short chapter of our lives (by closing on the sale of the Havelock House), and opened a new one, which we hope will also be somewhat short, in purchasing another house to refurbish. (I mean, we hope the refurbishing will be somewhat short.)

This one needs a bit more work than the one in Havelock. And it was accordingly cheaper.

We're reminding ourselves that we like a good challenge as we tour the inside of our new purchase. It promises to be replete with learning experiences.

So, here's a bit of the tour.

The main floor:

You walk in to the living room, and there's another nearly identically sized room to your right. I doubt it's intended to have two living rooms, and that one is closer to the kitchen, so it's probably a formal dining room. The kitchen is big enough to eat in though, so who needs a dining room? It looks like a good school/play room to me.


The floor has a built-in car ramp. We're such cranky parents that we hope to remove it before the kids figure out how much fun it could be. (There's actually two buckles, but the other one didn't show up in pictures very well. This one is a couple of inches tall).



The kitchen doesn't have much in it.


And yes, it's that color. The ceiling is peeling ("Hey Mom! peeling and ceiling rhyme!")



The pantry boasts built in cabinets.


Our plan is to make the pantry into a laundry/bathroom and put cabinets in the kitchen.

That's the main floor. Out of the pantry is the stairs to the basement, but before we go there, why not finish looking at the more "finished" spaces?

Out of the living room/ entry room, whatever it is, there's a door with stairs going upstairs.
The door has a warning note. It says "Do not open door. I have a couple cats up stairs. unless I'm here. Thank you. " On the side it says "Don't want them out".


The stairs are the only place in the house with carpet.


The owner wasn't kidding about having cats up there.


If pictures could communicate a smell..... it seems they at least tried to deal with it.


(The house has been unoccupied for 3 or more years, and it's still smells enough to make you realize the value of a decent gas mask).

In addition to the nice, historical carpet, the landing on the stairs is cool. It has floorpaper.


Upstairs is a standard three-bedrooms and a bathroom. The bedrooms are stylin' with their papered walls AND floors.


Anyone need to use the restroom? It has two toilets! (One is even hooked up, but neither look operational).



Now for the bizarre architecture moment. Inside the bathroom, way in the back, are the stairs to the attic.


We'd like to make this attic into living quarters for Nate, but seriously, he'll have to go through the only bathroom in the house to get to his bedroom? Hmm....


Moving the stairs will require remaking the roof (which wouldn't hurt the house any). Maybe Nate can live with going through the bathroom? Maybe we'll be ambitious and actually remake the roof. If you know us well, you already know what the plan is....

Back to the tour.

Just in case you weren't convinced that we should do a full gut of the house, this is the pantry wall, at the top of the stairs to the basement:


Now, the basement. The stairs are directly under the other two sets, which go from the west-middle of the house to the middle-middle of the house. Just in case you care.



It's dark down there. (Did I mention that there's no electrical service to this house?) They tell me there's moonshine and old canning jars hiding down here. I'm looking forward to seeing those, but I don't plan on visiting the basement in person too soon.


The house has been jacked before. It needs it again.


And this is probably why: it would be nice, maybe even expected that a house would have a foundation. Especially with nice, poured basement walls that are obviously MUCH more recent than the rest of the house. A little digging proved that assumption presumptuous.


That would be the bottom of the basement walls. They just end. No footings. Nothing even approaching the frost line. No supports. Wait, why is the house still standing? Maybe we should get out now.....

First order of business: Get that house supported. Bet that won't be as fast or cheap as we were hoping.

The element of surprise is half the fun, right? It's a good thing that we like a good adventure.

"I'm never going back there", says the seller. Yet, there's tickets for overgrown weeds taped to the front door. So it wasn't difficult to convince the seller and realtor to give permission to do "yard work" before closing (still a few weeks away). They even gave us keys.

To say the yard was overgrown is rather accurate.



The back yard is big (about 1/2 acre total), but you could hardly see the house from the boundary of the yard.


After removing that line of "trees" (large brush is a better description), you can now see the house from behind.



We selected about three trees to save:

The perfect shade tree on the south side of the house.


A really nice "let's have a picnic under it" tree. (Is it a locust tree? It doesn't have thorns.)


And a lopsided pear tree.



Everything else either has or probably will go. Of course, there are plans to buy and plant fruit trees :)

After clearing up most of the trees, Chester tried out our new mower.

A fork in the road

It was not that long ago when I would have said "I just don't understand people who _____". A meaning to be taken, those types of people clearly must either live in some alternate universe or be crazy as a loon. However, it should be noted that not all loons are actually crazy.

It was not all that long ago that I encountered a fork in the road. It was not your usual fork, stamped metal, chrome plated, plain design, but it was a fork that you would remember. The type of fork that projects a curious vibration suggesting there were choices to be made that would impact a persons future. Perhaps the kind of fork you might find when leaving a job you had been at for 7 years, or by purchasing another house at an auction and walking through the kitchen.

Some people don't ever even see that fork, while some may choose to ignore it, I however have picked up the fork , washed it and added it to our silverware drawer. I hope to share some of what transpires with you, perhaps without boring you to tears or driving you to madness.