I suppose I should say granddad and grandma's house, but to us kid's it was, "we're going to grandma's,etc."This is my earliest memory and I suppose we were living in an attic appartment next door, owned by Rudy Seft, who also owned a smaller house down from the big house I lived in as a very young kid. Rudy's house was brick on River Road-my dad would build his first house with land and funds from his parents as I stated before. For some reason, my parents and the Seft's didn't get along as neighbors, which, as my brother Bill has pointed out, it seems my parents made enemies in the three different places they lived, of all their"neighbors".
The first thing can recall about grandm'a house was that it was BIG. When they bought it, it was made of 4" wood plank boards, painted yellow and most of the paint was chipping or weather rotting off... A number of years later, they had the house sidded with white, aluminum siding(vinyl was not invented yet! Now, my grandmother, years later, swears I wasn't "around" yet to remember this next fact, but I was: the basement was just a hole in the ground! I The floor and walls weree a red-brown colored dirt. The Big ol' coal furnace sat towards one end and what became later, a small tool, paarts shed for my granddad, was the coal storage room. A metal door on the side-outside-would be opened and the coal truck would fill the room via a chute full of coal. a coal furnace either made the house to hot or when the coals died down, it got to cold. Plus, the ashes and clinkers would have to be shoveled out of the bottom of the furnace to make room for fresh coal to be shoveled in the top. the basement got toasty warm in the winter just from the heat the metal furnace gave off-which was better than the warm months of the years, the basement always smelled musty. There were 3 other items in the basement: a Maytag single tub, wringer washer machine, next to a galvanized steel double sink. An old kitchen table was near to fold dry clothes on. Clothesline was strung in the basement and the back yard. At the wall opposite the coal room was a two burner gas burner, made of cast iron and on which a large oval, copper tub sat on the burners. On laundry day(usually Monday's) it was filled with water and cotton based clothing and brought to a boil to clean and also to starch those things that needed starched-like linen table cloths for the dining room table-which was only used to eat on at Thanksgiving. All other times, all meals were in the eat in kitchen. There was a vertical rack with 100's of small nails sticking out-rack was probably 4x8 feet. After the crocheted tablecloths were starched they were stretched on the rack to hold their shape while drying. And when I say laundry day, it was ALL day-not just load and push a button, then go do something else.
Years later. after the basement was finish with cement block walls and a poured cement floor, that old wood table became for my use-which was usually some kind of science experiments involving either electricity or chemicals. I just remembered: there also was an unused full wooden radio with the big paper dial behind glass. it stood about 3-4' high and was vacuum tube powered with a 12-15" speaker. Bill and I decided to take it apart; he wanted to turn it around and put in book shelves. an I wanted the big magnet from the speaker. Lots of copper wire which we eventually sold to the "junk man" for cash to go bowling when the new automatic, 32 lane bowling plaza opened up in Natrona Heights. 3 games for a dollar! The other thing in the basement was the old fashion record player that you wound up with a handle on the side and "music" came out of the interior, when you opened up the doors. So we used it for the next best thing, since it really played badly" we used the turn table for pottery-placed a glob of real gray clay in the ceneter and tried to fashion vases. that hobby didin't last for more than a few days!
Now the old dirt basement had unwanted visitors: RATS. not little mice, but big sewer rats who probable seen the big dirt hole as a good place to live. I recall granddad walking up the avenue to the hardware store and buy a bag of arsenic.good ol deadly, heavy meal arsenic! He would mix this with some sugar, take a slice of his favorite Vienna bread, butter it, then sprinkle the poisoned sugar all over the top(the butter kept it in place) and place slices of the bread in different dark area's of the basement. I can't remember if he used rat traps-they look like mouse traps, only larger and strong enough to break your finger. or a rat's neck!. But I do remember the poisoned bread, something he probably learned how to do while still in EUROPE. Anyway, I will describe the rest of the house and yards later. Just don't eat any homemade bread if it has butter with"sugar" sprinkled on top!! As a side note which I learned selling for Ruth Industries: arsenic is the best crab grass killer available, and it was on and of the market at the whim of the Ag department. I had a customer who was park superintendent of Ottawa, IL. He was getting overrun by pigeons around the park dumpsters. When he started to shot them with a pellet rifle, all the "sweet" old ladies who fed the pigeons, called the Mayor to complain. Pigeon's are known to carry at least 27 different diseases. Our company carried a water based crab grass killer with arsenic in it. So Russ would soak bird seed in the crab grass killer and then put some in each dumpster, trying to keep it away from song birds. Eventually, no more pigeons! Arsenic never leaves the body; like any other heavy metal, it just keeps building up in concentration till it killed the pigeons! Just thought you would find that interesting! So if you spray your yard for crab grass and it has arsenic in it, good idea to keep pets from walking or eating the grass and don't let your kids (or you) run barefoot through the grass cause the poison will be absorbed through the feet! Next: the wonder's of the "back yard" and the wonderful breakfast of bacon, eggs, and Vienna bread for breakfast every Sunday after church at"grandma's" house:)
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