This is a story about me, that my father liked to tell, about a time shortly after he and my mother divorced. A story that he would tell till the day he died, the story about “the crack house and the snow covered bed”
1976 in Fairview Oklahoma
After my parents divorced, I was forced to make a choice, move to a different state with my mother or ? (stay with my father) The choice wasn’t a hard one to make, I had a job, friends, a girlfriend, mom and dad really wasn’t a factor in my decision.
My father moved into his newly remodeled office. My mother took my sister and moved back to where her family was living. In Illinois.
And, by default, I was left to fend for myself. I was 16, and I worked, and I had money, and transportation. I was self-reliant anyway, so it really wasn’t that big a deal.
I lived in my parents house for several months, till it sold. I then moved in with friends of the family, the Simmons family. They were more family than friends. And at the time they were remodeling an old three story Victorian house, and had plenty of room. But that was an uncomfortable situation, partly because it wasn’t the situation that I was looking for and it was their house.
The solution came in the form of a “crack house” wann’a-be. I won’t lie to you, it was in pretty bad shape. The front door was a piece of plywood that had been nailed over the opening, to keep people out. It had a good roof, and a decent floor, but virtually no paint on the outside, and windows that had been nailed shut. It had a detached garage that was leaning at a difficult angle. And it had ancient plumbing, no air conditioning, and not really much else. But it was affordable and fixable, and most I could move in without much money.
The house had a floor heater in the main room, (the living room) at the door of a very short hallway that both bedrooms and the bathroom all opened into. The bedrooms were separated by the bathroom and a linen pantry and a small alcove that was later used for a telephone (who knows what it was originally built for).
I never tried to connect or operate the furnace, partly because this type of heater relied upon radiant heat, and the fact that they were a death trap. And I simply don’t like them, or trust them, to function properly.
That type of heater needs to be vented with a roof vent and a pipe that runs to the heater under the house. Otherwise you could find that you don’t wake up some cold morning. Really a very small number of this type of heater was vented properly, which could result in carbon monoxide buildup and poisoning.
I found an archaic gas space heater at a second hand store. The kind that uses open flames to heat ceramic blocks, and that heated a large room or a small house very well. It connected to under floor pipes, with a flexible hose and a manual ball valve.
I sat my bed in the corner of the largest of the two bedrooms. This one had 2 windows. The room was small, and the placement of the bed was difficult, because of the position of the room’s door, and the closet.
One of the windows hit the bed midsection. The other was about a foot from the head of the bed. The window at the head of the bed wasn’t a problem. Duct tape and sheet plastic took care of most of the problems that this window had. And the fact that this window was a south facing window insured that any air leakage wouldn’t be much of a winter problem. The problem was the other window. This window faced west and hit the bed about mid-section. I used this window on nice days to ventilate the room.
This was an old house that hadn’t been updated or remodeled. The windows operated on a counterweight system. The weights made the windows easier to open than to close. But these windows weren’t very tight and rattled a bit when the wind blew from that direction. If it rattled too much the window could work itself open just a bit. I usually used towels on the window ledge and at the top where the two sections of the window met each other, this helped to insulate from any air leakage, but also would get wet from condensation when the house was warm and it was cold outside.
I lived in that house for several months without power. But I really didn’t need it. I had a “boom box” style radio that used batteries, oil lamps and candles for light, and initially I had no refrigerator and I didn’t own a TV, but couldn‘t use one anyway, Fairview Oklahoma, was isolated and remote, there was only one TV station within broadcast range and you needed a 30 foot antenna. This was 1976, cable tv was expensive and real new.
The water heater, like my space heater was propane, which operated from a large tank in the back of the house. I didn’t have a stove for a while after I moved in. It took me some time to find a good second hand oven and a working refrigerator. By the time winter hit, I had worked out most of the kinks, and I was really quite comfortable.
The first winter that I owned the house was a bad one, the weather was horrible. One of the first snows that year blew in with a front that came in fast and at night. It had been bitterly cold for the better part of a week but this front had a lot of moisture with it. I had several quilts on the bed, and being warm and cozy in my little nest, and the fact that it was a Saturday morning, I had slept in longer than usual.
My father, who was always an early riser, showed up before I had awakened. I didn’t have a telephone, and this was long before cell phones. He really didn’t have much of a choice but to just show up at the house. He was apparently worried about the weather and wanted to check that I was warm and had everything that I needed. Which I did.
The storm had been accompanied by a lot of wind, and had come in from the northwest delivering about 6” of a very fine powdery snow. Sometime during the night the wind had rattled the window open by the smallest of cracks, because I had removed the wet towels and hadn‘t bothered to replace them yet, having a limited number of towels and no way to wash them except by hand. And of coarse I didn’t have the towel on the windowsill that night, so snow had blown onto the bed and deposited a tiny sliver across the homemade quilts heaped above me. When my Father came into the room he didn’t notice the snow on the bed right away, until he sat down on the corner of the bed.
This made a huge impression on Pop. For the next 30 years (The rest of his life) he’d tell the story about the crap hole of a place that I lived in during the divorce.
He liked to tell people that the house was so bad, that he literally had to brush the snow off me one morning before I could get out of bed. The place really wasn’t that bad, I’ve lived in worse places since then. And I lived there for several years. But to my father, that was “the crack house and the snow covered bed!”
1976 in Fairview Oklahoma
After my parents divorced, I was forced to make a choice, move to a different state with my mother or ? (stay with my father) The choice wasn’t a hard one to make, I had a job, friends, a girlfriend, mom and dad really wasn’t a factor in my decision.
My father moved into his newly remodeled office. My mother took my sister and moved back to where her family was living. In Illinois.
And, by default, I was left to fend for myself. I was 16, and I worked, and I had money, and transportation. I was self-reliant anyway, so it really wasn’t that big a deal.
I lived in my parents house for several months, till it sold. I then moved in with friends of the family, the Simmons family. They were more family than friends. And at the time they were remodeling an old three story Victorian house, and had plenty of room. But that was an uncomfortable situation, partly because it wasn’t the situation that I was looking for and it was their house.
The solution came in the form of a “crack house” wann’a-be. I won’t lie to you, it was in pretty bad shape. The front door was a piece of plywood that had been nailed over the opening, to keep people out. It had a good roof, and a decent floor, but virtually no paint on the outside, and windows that had been nailed shut. It had a detached garage that was leaning at a difficult angle. And it had ancient plumbing, no air conditioning, and not really much else. But it was affordable and fixable, and most I could move in without much money.
The house had a floor heater in the main room, (the living room) at the door of a very short hallway that both bedrooms and the bathroom all opened into. The bedrooms were separated by the bathroom and a linen pantry and a small alcove that was later used for a telephone (who knows what it was originally built for).
I never tried to connect or operate the furnace, partly because this type of heater relied upon radiant heat, and the fact that they were a death trap. And I simply don’t like them, or trust them, to function properly.
That type of heater needs to be vented with a roof vent and a pipe that runs to the heater under the house. Otherwise you could find that you don’t wake up some cold morning. Really a very small number of this type of heater was vented properly, which could result in carbon monoxide buildup and poisoning.
I found an archaic gas space heater at a second hand store. The kind that uses open flames to heat ceramic blocks, and that heated a large room or a small house very well. It connected to under floor pipes, with a flexible hose and a manual ball valve.
I sat my bed in the corner of the largest of the two bedrooms. This one had 2 windows. The room was small, and the placement of the bed was difficult, because of the position of the room’s door, and the closet.
One of the windows hit the bed midsection. The other was about a foot from the head of the bed. The window at the head of the bed wasn’t a problem. Duct tape and sheet plastic took care of most of the problems that this window had. And the fact that this window was a south facing window insured that any air leakage wouldn’t be much of a winter problem. The problem was the other window. This window faced west and hit the bed about mid-section. I used this window on nice days to ventilate the room.
This was an old house that hadn’t been updated or remodeled. The windows operated on a counterweight system. The weights made the windows easier to open than to close. But these windows weren’t very tight and rattled a bit when the wind blew from that direction. If it rattled too much the window could work itself open just a bit. I usually used towels on the window ledge and at the top where the two sections of the window met each other, this helped to insulate from any air leakage, but also would get wet from condensation when the house was warm and it was cold outside.
I lived in that house for several months without power. But I really didn’t need it. I had a “boom box” style radio that used batteries, oil lamps and candles for light, and initially I had no refrigerator and I didn’t own a TV, but couldn‘t use one anyway, Fairview Oklahoma, was isolated and remote, there was only one TV station within broadcast range and you needed a 30 foot antenna. This was 1976, cable tv was expensive and real new.
The water heater, like my space heater was propane, which operated from a large tank in the back of the house. I didn’t have a stove for a while after I moved in. It took me some time to find a good second hand oven and a working refrigerator. By the time winter hit, I had worked out most of the kinks, and I was really quite comfortable.
The first winter that I owned the house was a bad one, the weather was horrible. One of the first snows that year blew in with a front that came in fast and at night. It had been bitterly cold for the better part of a week but this front had a lot of moisture with it. I had several quilts on the bed, and being warm and cozy in my little nest, and the fact that it was a Saturday morning, I had slept in longer than usual.
My father, who was always an early riser, showed up before I had awakened. I didn’t have a telephone, and this was long before cell phones. He really didn’t have much of a choice but to just show up at the house. He was apparently worried about the weather and wanted to check that I was warm and had everything that I needed. Which I did.
The storm had been accompanied by a lot of wind, and had come in from the northwest delivering about 6” of a very fine powdery snow. Sometime during the night the wind had rattled the window open by the smallest of cracks, because I had removed the wet towels and hadn‘t bothered to replace them yet, having a limited number of towels and no way to wash them except by hand. And of coarse I didn’t have the towel on the windowsill that night, so snow had blown onto the bed and deposited a tiny sliver across the homemade quilts heaped above me. When my Father came into the room he didn’t notice the snow on the bed right away, until he sat down on the corner of the bed.
This made a huge impression on Pop. For the next 30 years (The rest of his life) he’d tell the story about the crap hole of a place that I lived in during the divorce.
He liked to tell people that the house was so bad, that he literally had to brush the snow off me one morning before I could get out of bed. The place really wasn’t that bad, I’ve lived in worse places since then. And I lived there for several years. But to my father, that was “the crack house and the snow covered bed!”
No comments:
Post a Comment