The house was built by a man named Mark Stewart. I remember Dad relating a conversation with Mr. Stewart concerning the well which reportedly “…cost me a hunnerd dollars!” Dad smiled at that because it was a bargain even in 1956. The well was 100 feet deep and the water table was at 50 feet. The water was cold, clear, tasted good, and never ran out.

The first couple of years there, we were renters. The owner at that time was George Raker who lived a few miles west toward Susanville. For some reason Dad needed to drive a tractor up to his place one Saturday morning. I remember because I got to go with him. It was sunny but a little windy and cold. I didn’t mind, I was with my Dad and he let me help steer while sitting on his lap. After he was sure I could do it reasonably well, he sat back and just let me. I was a little disappointed when he reached under the steering wheel to throttle back and took over to make the turn off the highway. Another reason to remember the day was Mr. Raker — he only had one leg. Never did hear that story. Many years later I played Little League baseball with his nephew, Greg Bouchard, who seemed a bit sensitive when I mentioned having met him, so I didn’t pursue it.

When Marble Burch bought the place, Mom and Dad worked out a deal where they got the house and ten acres and Mr. Burch took the rest. He was one colorful character. He raised and trained thoroughbred horses. Since we had the house, he moved into the front part of the old concrete dairy barn, which was originally the business office, for a few months until he could build a new one. Funny thing was, the new house he built was also made of mostly concrete and was quite similar to the front part of the dairy barn! In both cases, his bedroom was a vault-like room with no windows. The thought of actually having to sleep there kind of gave me the creeps.

My brother Dale and I shared the middle bedroom in the old house. Our parents had the front bedroom and the little boys occupied the one off the dining room. I marvel now at the memory of waking up instantly, one second totally unconscious, the next wide awake and jumping out of bed to get the day started! One morning after my instant-on, I looked around the room for something to play with and found a chain that was once part of the backyard swing set. Don’t know where the idea came from but I decided to pretend I was fishing with it. We had a metal framed double bed in those early years. Standing in the middle of it, I hung on to one end of the chain and tossed the other over the frame at the foot. Then I hauled it back up, all the while with a running commentary for Dale, who was awake but still under the covers. You can imagine the racket that made as each link in the chain clanked over the hollow metal tubing. After only about three or four casts, Mom walked in. “Could you please wait until at least 7 o’clock to do that?” Unbeknownst to me, it was Saturday, the one day both parents could sleep in awhile. “Sure Mom!” She retreated and I got back in bed, holding still and not talking for what seemed like an hour to me. I think in reality it was between five and ten minutes. Mom just bowed to the inevitable and got up to make breakfast.

The layout of the house was significant in ensuring the memorability of at least one incident that occurred within it’s walls: the great Saturday night slip and slide. The one and only bathroom was at the far north end of the house. It was a fairly long twisting path from any of the bedrooms, requiring a sharp left turn into the hallway between the dining room and kitchen, then two more right turns. Dad had taken all five of us to a barbecue at Eagle Lake. It was the housekeeper’s night off and we all got sick in the middle of the night. One of the first (and I don’t remember which one that was) to feel the urgent need to hurl, failed to make it all the way to the bathroom, depositing his now unwelcome picnic dinner in the hallway. The whole house, except for the living room, had waxed linoleum floors that were definitely slippery when wet. Everyone who came after, in the dark, hit the danger zone at a full gallop, tried to plant their foot to make that turn and slid all the way into the laundry room, ending up in a pile of dirty clothes that really needed washing in the morning.

We moved to a house in Standish (which had two bathrooms) in my junior year in high school. At the time, I was happy to live in a newer house. In the summer of ’69, there was a fire at the old house. I had to stop there on the way home from work to see the damage for myself. It didn’t look too bad until it came to the point of origin — the ceiling light fixture in the walk-in closet in my old bedroom. It was strange thinking about how many times I had pulled that string, possibly incrementing that old electrical system toward catastrophic failure. A few months later, the new owner decided not to rebuild. It was demolished and a couple of trailers were moved in its place.

Years later I heard that there were discussions in the weeks after the accident about splitting the family up. There were suggestions and offers of new homes for each of us boys. It was thought to be too much to ask of a single father to work and take care of us too. Dad chose the hard road and kept us all together. I for one, am glad he did. It would have been much more devastating to lose both parents, though in a way, I did. Dad came to depend on me as a sounding board, I think because I was the oldest. It was a source of friction for many of the adults who came to take care of us later. Dad usually wanted my opinion before making a decision and that could irritate the hell out of them, especially when I did not agree with their side of an argument. I miss him so much. But that will come later.

Gramma DeVeau stayed with us for awhile. I remember one morning making toast for breakfast and asking if she wanted some. She did but wanted to make it herself in order to get it just right. I thought she was pretty fussy about it. Dentures, the existence of which she was very careful not to reveal, were the reason for it – too little time in the toaster or too much butter made it soggy and harder to chew, while too long meant scraping away a lot of carbon. Couldn’t afford to throw it away. In any event she felt the desired outcome was more likely in her hands than mine.

Aunt Curly (real name Caroline, Dad’s sister) took over for a few months after Gramma. I wish I’d had a chance to know her better after I was an adult. She had kind of a tough and interesting life. She had three husbands that I know of and two daughters, Marion and Karen. Marion arrived when Curly was 15, whispered to be the result of abuse by an uncle. I never got the whole story. Adults don’t talk about those things around kids. Karen was a rather rebellious teenager in the early ’60s. She did not live with us, but did come around to stir things up once in a while. There were a few mature black locust trees on the property and one in the backyard that we climbed on a regular basis just because we could. On Karen’s first visit, I was about half way up when she came out the back door and saw me. She said, “I bet I can climb higher than you.” Well I knew there was just no way she could, so up I went thinking I’d go up first and then wait and watch as she tried to go higher. When I was at the point where I usually stopped, Karen egged me one some more: “I can go higher than that.” I should have suspected something besides me was up, but I didn’t. So I climbed until the branches were just large enough to support my weight. I knew she could not possibly go that high due to the simple fact that she was 6 or 7 years older than I and consequently heavier as well. At that point she turned around to face the screen door at the back of the house and hollered as loud as she could, “Mother, Jerry’s climbing trees!” I’m sitting there thinking, “Yeah, so?” In seconds, Aunt Curly came running and demanded, “Jerry! Get down from there!” Karen burst out laughing. I was stunned! That devious redhead had had no intention of climbing herself. She merely wanted to get me in trouble. She had purposely gotten me to climb too far to get down quickly, though at the time it never even occurred to me that I should. There had never been an issue with climbing nor had I ever before encountered such behavior.

Aunt Curly had her own life to live and neither she or Dad expected it to be a long term arrangement. But consider the alternatives. Was it possible to convince a total stranger to come live out in the country 14 miles from the nearest town in an old 3 bedroom, 1 bath, ranch house to cook and clean for a 36 year old man and his five, count ‘em, five boys, six days a week (Sundays off) for room and board and $100 dollars a month? Turns out, it was, and part of the attraction for some was that 30 something man.

Eventually Dad hired the first of several live-in housekeepers: Juanita. Sweet and cheerful are the first two words that come to mind to describe her. She was a little taller than Dad (about 5′ 6″) with short curly black hair and brown eyes, a bit on the heavy side, though that may only be in comparison to Mom who was a tiny little thing just shy of 5′. I don’t remember her soft voice ever being raised with any of us, though she could be stern with her own teenage daughter, Susan. Juanita introduced us to tacos. It seems inconceivable now that anyone living in California could reach the age of ten and not know about tacos. But this was Lassen County in the sparsely populated northeast corner of the state many years before the High Desert State Prison turned Susanville into a prison town. Tacos became a Saturday night tradition. When she left about two years later, we tried to continue, but they just were not the same without Juanita. Looking back, I think she was not only the first, in many ways she was the best. We were primed for disappoint with those who came after.

Alice Westfield was a cranky old widow of a railroad man. She smoked and drank at least as much, if not more than the other denizens of the Wayside Inn in Standish, which I think is where Dad found her and offered her the job after Juanita’s departure. Good help has always been hard to find, I guess. She had a voice like gravel and from a distance the only clue she wasn’t a he was the hair that was only a little longer than a man would have worn it in those times. But putting aside her personality, she was a decent housekeeper and cook. She made the best “chili beans” bar none. They were so good in fact that for the next 20 years or so I thought they were the only kind of beans worth eating. Made it kind of tough for my most excellent spouse, Patricia, when we were first married and hers didn’t measure up.

If those faces are unfamiliar to you, this typical home computer of the time ought to produce a chuckle.

Remember this President? He lost the election after this appearance at what was billed as a Townhall Meeting in Torrance, CA, which I did see for myself. He went on to be a much better human rights champion than he ever was a President and also won a Nobel Peace Prize. So maybe if George Bush had lost the election, he could have won … naw, I don’t think so.