We celebrated the 18th anniversary of our arrival here last week on the 17th. As we always do around this time every year, we’ve been reminiscing about the events that brought us here, the miracles, the angels who assisted. We laugh about the trip across the country – from Los Angeles, California (where it was 70°) to Gold, Pennsylvania (where it was -20°) – 2,668 miles in eight days. It was an adventure (sometimes a nightmare) that I hope never to repeat. It involved seven children, a dog and two cats and a cockatiel, our old Suburban, and a moving van towing our Toyota Cressida. It also involved the dog beeping the horn while we were in a restaurant eating dinner in Texas, the dog pooping all over the cab of the moving van while we were at a rest stop, and being pulled over by the police in Missouri because they thought Stacey was drunk because she was driving down the middle of the road (it was a narrow two-lane road and she was driving the van and it was snowy and she was tired). Good times – or maybe not. So we’ve been here for eighteen years now and I’ve never gotten over the wonder of it. I love living here. I love this old house.
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| This what it looked like when I came to visit the house the November before we moved here. |
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| This is Asa Shillig and Josiah Howe on the drive when we moved here. Asa just got home from is mission and Josiah is now serving his mission. | |
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Living in an old house is also an adventure. I wrote a few weeks ago about our well pump and the trouble we’ve been having with it. How it keeps stopping and how I have to go down to the cellar and thump it with a wrench to get it running again. On Wednesday it stopped twice and each time I administered the usual remedy and it worked. Thursday morning (at 5:30 when I went to take a shower) there was no water – again. Groaning, I bundled up and went down to thump it once again. Nothing happened this time. The pump wouldn’t turn on. It seems that when I came back up from the cellar on Wednesday night, the cellar door didn’t latch properly and it came open during the night. The pump sits right by the door. We thought the pump was either frozen or finally dead. We set an electric heater by it – which involved long extension cords plugged into an outlet in the woodshed and passed through the boards on the back porch – and all of this going on in the dark of the freezing (7°) predawn. Then we went to work – no showers, no brushed teeth – hoping and praying the pump was just frozen and would thaw.
I fretted at school all that day wondering if the pump was really dead and what we would do if it was. Then Stacey called. She had the plumber who works for her boss come to the house and take a look at it. He determined that the pump wasn’t frozen, the pipe connecting the well to the pump was. By the time we all got home that afternoon, the pipe had thawed and the water was running once again. What a relief! But the plumber also said that the pump was on its last legs and would need to be replaced very soon. He told us that he has a pump he ordered for another job and it was the wrong pump and he couldn’t return it and it would work with our system. He offered to install it at a very reasonable price. He’s coming tomorrow to install it. We are so relieved. What a blessing! Stacey is also negotiating with the plumber to replace our hot water tank. It’s also pretty old. Almost everything in this house is pretty old.
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| The old well pump and the new one behind it waiting to be installed tomorrow. |
In 2020 we will celebrate the 100th anniversary of Howes living in this house. My grandfather bought this place in 1920. The house, at least the oldest part of it, was built in 1869. It originally had no indoor plumbing or electricity. It didn’t even have its own well – it shared the well next door at what was then my great-grandfather’s farm. In looking closely, you can still find the relics of the old house – the remains of chimneys that were removed later (the house had three back then), the remains of the first electrical wiring (cloth wrapped wire threaded on ceramic insulators), and the crumbling ruin of the old outhouse out in what is now the woodland garden.
In the eighteen years we’ve lived here, we’ve changed a few things. We had the foundation beams braced (the house used to dip in the middle). We had a new roof put on (that needs to be replaced again). We had the old asbestos siding taken off and vinyl siding put on. We’ve had the windows replaced. We’ve taken down layers of wallpaper in some of the rooms and painted and repainted walls. We’ve built bookshelves in some of the rooms. We installed a wood stove and replaced the old gas furnace with a new one. The yard and gardens have seen considerable change over the years and will continue to do so. There are still lots of things that need changing – the project list on a house this old is long and constantly growing longer. But some parts of the house remain the same and always will. My love for this place has changed over the years too – it has continued to grow and it always will. It’s nice living in the place you always dreamed of, in a place where you know you belong.
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| A dismal photo, but this how things look here today. |
By 2020 there will probably be just Stacey and I living here. The seven children who arrived here on January 17th 2000 are all grown up. Some of those children are married (even more of them by 2020, hopefully) and they now bring their children to visit their grandparents in this old house. That’s what I’ve always wanted.
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| Icicles on the front of the house. |
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| One of several nice sunrises last week. |
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| A shot from when I was out running errands yesterday. |
