24 Home 3, Pets

Home 3

In those days on Sundays by request I drove a young woman to and from the Belleville church, where we both attended; she lived nearby, in North Kingstown’s Hamilton community on Bissell Cove of Narragansett Bay, in a big old former apartment house on Worsley Avenue with her parents and brother.  One Sunday afternoon Ginny and I were driving this young woman home from church when we saw a house (our present, long-time, home) en route at 190 Waldron Avenue recently offered for sale.  Ginny, who since childhood wanted to be married in October in New England, liked the large splendidly colored sugar maple trees on Waldron Avenue; I think the house was on the market only a very short while, as we went in to meet the owners, an elderly couple who lived on Wyndham Avenue in Providence, and I offered to buy it on the spot; the prior owners themselves carried our mortgage, which we paid off in four years.  We lived there since we were married; like most houses in our community it was a summer cottage, and was built in 1936; the owners added ells for a kitchen at one end and a lavatory and odd L-shaped bedroom at the other.  Outside (still standing) were a stone fireplace and an outhouse with a double latrine and a sink and shower room, where the toilet facilities were (this building, with clapboard to match the house, was built as two units, each with gabled roof; but over the years it settled badly, the floor and its 2×4 supports being eaten by termites, and was rebuilt in 2009 with a single gable roof, and shingles to match the house.  The house weathered the devastating 1938 hurricane, because the hill on which it is situated is the highest land in our immediate neighborhood; the water came to the semi-circular front steps but no higher.

The former owner woman left all furnishings in the home, including a beautiful wicker set for the screened-in porch, and her extensive collection of small pitchers lining the beams in our rooms.  There was an old iron-framed double bed, curtains, and all kitchen utensils – we lacked nothing, again a marvelous instance of the Lord’s providing care!

After we were married, I used my time between jobs to begin preparing our home for living year-round in the cold New England winters:  I nailed white cedar shingles (never need painting) over the clapboard siding, installed 2×6 rafters (a Christian friend helped me with these), a dry-wall ceiling and 12” boards to make an attic floor, rearranged the ¼” plywood walls with their quarter-round moldings, I made an indoor bathroom (divided for privacy) and a new forced warm air furnace system (with humidifier) from Sears (this propane-fired heating plant I eventually replaced, after several years of heating our home with a wood-burning Franklin stove while I cleared trees off our large 1 ¼ acre lot).  In the process of clearing, I cut several large shadblow bushes that abounded on our property; these were the biggest I ever saw, and I used several trunks (3-4”) as fence posts for our garden we had in those years.  Many years later I found, badly rusted, the tin snips whose loss inspired this whole project.  The cleared side yard we used as a baseball field, and later the uphill side for horseshoe pits, complete with clay fetched from a landscape supply dealer in south-western RI.

We were visited, at separate times, by my mother (appalled by my beard and moustache, in the “frozen wasteland of the north”), by my cousin Ted (gave us a red “Rock City” birdhouse as a memento/house gift – looked cute, but birds wouldn’t go near it); by Ginny’s uncle Chandler (her father’s brother and grandfather Allan’s youngest); by her younger sister Lynda; and by her cousins Diane and Diana (the twins).

As years went by and our family (and acquisitions) grew, I made further changes to our house:

1. I worked with a Christian roofer to replace the old roof, and put up gutters and downspouts.
2. I enlarged the kitchen to 12×15’, closing in the small screened back porch, raising the floor of that area and relocating the windows.
3. To make another bedroom (which at one time accommodated our three boys) I enclosed the 9×18’ screened front porch, framing rough openings for six 30×57” double hung windows (two of which came from our living room’s closed-up wall); two windows at each end of the new bedroom were mullioned double; and sheathed and shingled the whole to match the rest of the house.
4. I replaced the large awning window at the end of the kitchen with an equal sized angle bay window, bought from Brewster’s Lumber in Providence, by “WEN” with 45 degree casements at each side.  I put matching casement windows at the front (over the sink) and back of the kitchen.
5. I hired the basement dug out (the contractor drove a “Bobcat” under the propped-up house), poured a 4” thick concrete floor for 6’6” ceiling height (shorter than standard, as that’s all one pillar would allow), built a two-flue center chimney with slate cap, and matching block walls between the existing concrete pillars (moving a huge boulder my contractor broke his Bobcat – we took a picture of our older kids sitting on this rock before it was buried in the side yard.  I installed an outside door with nine window-lights and interlocking metal weatherstrip, cut shorter to accommodate the ceiling height.  The basement had seven 8×32” Andersen windows and two more 30×54” double hung windows under the master bedroom upstairs; all the windows were directly under upstairs windows, preserving the symmetrical beauty of the house.  At this time we left the area in front with dirt walls, thinking we wanted a “root cellar”.
6. I hired the same contractor to make a septic system (two “galleys”) connected to our old 750 gallon cesspool; to protect this, I made a “dry well” consisting of a 10’ length of 4” perforated plastic drain, buried about a foot, and connected by an elbow to an above-ground 1 ½” steel pipe which received our washing machine’s “grey water” with its field-plugging laundry soap (a friend, moving with a borrowed truck a heavy upright piano we gave him, ran over my plastic 4” elbow, breaking it).
7. Working with another Christian friend, I made two 2×4’ closets with sliding doors in the bedrooms, next to the chimney, thus reducing the spare bedroom to 8×12’.
8. I hired the same contractor to build a block wall in the remaining front of the basement.

After Ginny and I married, I was using a yellow-handled (straight cut) pair of Wiss tin snips to cut briars beside our house, and lost the snips; I began cutting brush with a bow saw to find them, and ultimately cleared the side yard, which became filled with the cut brush (I found my snips years later, buried and rusty).  Using mower gasoline. I set the brush pile afire – big mistake: the fire was too high, and I almost killed a glorious big white oak tree; the tree’s trunk and lower limbs were scorched; it appears to have recovered, but one side of the trunk was scarred by the flames, and eventually bark enclosed a section with dead wood and soil.  When our kids were little, we heated our home with wood cut off our land, both the side yard and selected trees from elsewhere in our yard.  The cleared land became a vegetable garden, later a ball field, and our lawn.  In the clearing process I cut a stand of shadblow bushes – these were the biggest I’ve ever seen, with stems (trunks!) 3 to 4” thick; I used these pieces as fence posts for our garden, especially in our low-lying swale, as they were quite water-tolerant.

In my early years at CTI, while our children were small (Betsy was six weeks old), the two older boys Joseph and John set out on their tricycles with their lunch boxes to follow me to work; they were intercepted by a resident, who shepherded them back to our house, and scolded (frazzled) Ginny for neglecting them.

At that time we were heating our home by burning wood in a beige Franklin stove I bought; Ginny and I cut our trees with a large 36” bow saw and 7’ two-man cross-cut saw.  We made 16” logs, which fit in the stove, and I split the larger logs with a maul, or a wedge and 3 lb hammer from a local hardware store.  Generally a slice from a big tree trunk supplied about enough wood for one day; we lived this way until we could no longer stay ahead of the intensifying cold weather, and then I bought, from my Leesona friend, a chainsaw, a light blue Homelite brand with 21” bar, and for a while used it to cut wood, until the saw was stolen next spring, probably by our next-door neighbor kids.  I bought an 87% efficiency boiler with Beckett oil burner and controls, an oil tank, and designed a hydronic (hot water) heating system including baseboard heaters, bought the parts, and installed it all, with soldering help from an ex-Marine at CTI.

The kitchen counter was only 30” tall, as the woman for whom the house was built was short, and Ginny endured it for many years, though it made her back hurt; in March 2009 a carpenter friend in our church very kindly installed a new counter top, with a sturdy frame he built, and reusing our old SS sink and faucet with new shut-off valves and proper plumbing (hot and cold were always reversed) so it is now 34” (standard height), and she’s delighted.

After Ginny and I were married, she brought from Navy Newport a kitten; it lived in our home a few days until we figured out that we didn’t really want a cat.

Next there was a dog we named “Sport”, a German Shepherd mix; we brought him as a puppy from our first trip to Chattanooga for Christmas (have you tried to outdoor train a dog when the ground is always covered with snow?).  This dog used to excavate our yard, making deep holes that he could hide in with only his Shepherd ears showing.  After a few years we gave him to a local family in our Belleville church; we heard “he was finally “put to sleep” after some miscreant threw acid in his face.

Next we had a German Shepherd named Heidi.  She was aggressive and bit our old neighbor lady’s leg, so we had the dog put to sleep.

Our daughter Betsy brought home two kittens she named “Asia” and something else; they lived in our home about a week.

Next we had a brown-and-white mature hen we named “Pecky”; she laid an egg every day (we said for “Bin-da-bin”, which we called our youngest son) and last lived at the base of an oak in our front yard because I read that fowl eat carpenter ants, and we had plenty there.  I clipped her wing feathers to hinder flight; this led to her violent death by a neighbor’s dog (my chest-high fence confined the chicken but was no hindrance to the predatory animal); I was modestly recompensed by the town, but the dog was glad for his crime.  Ginny found her last egg the next day.

We next got a puppy from another young family in our church; this collie mix we named Thumper, because his habit of scratching reminded us of the rabbit in the Bambi movie.

There was briefly a Golden Retriever named Lori, which we got for free because she had an “undershot jaw”, from a kennel/breeder on Weaver Road in North Kingstown; took her back to them because she was also very shy and timid.

Next we had a Cockapoo (cross between Cocker Spaniel and Poodle) we named Jackson; we got this adult dog from our town’s pound.  He didn’t shed in summer, so one year I sheared him with our electric clippers; our daughter Irene wanted to make a pillow of the “fleece”, but it was full of fleas, so we threw it away.  Our QBC friend was “house-sitting” for us while we took a vacation trip when Jackson died just before we got home; I put him in an old freezer in the basement, awaiting the spring thaw when he could be buried.  This event occasioned much humor among some at CTI, spawning the term “pup-sicle”; Ginny never again used that freezer, which we eventually junked.

Next we bought from a QBC friend a Golden Retriever puppy we named Honey; she was our first “real” dog, and the only one we ever paid for.  When teething she chewed the legs and rockers of our chairs and Ginny’s needlework project.  The previous dam’s owners neglected to register her mother’s litter with the AKC, so that dog’s offspring, ultimately including Honey, could not be registered either.  Even so, Honey was pure-bred, and we fancied we would breed her.  Most of the time she was a great dog, but we taught her to bring the newspaper to our front step; this worked fine until she started fetching the neighbors’ papers from their driveways, and we began to get calls.  She enjoyed swimming at our beach, and could often be enticed to swim far out, by the splash of a thrown stone.  When Honey was “in heat” she became hard to keep in, and male dogs drawn by her scent came from miles around; our concept of morality meant nothing to her, so Ginny sometimes used a “mis-mate” shot by the vet to avoid an unplanned litter.  Over the years she produced four times, and we usually sold her puppies. I remember two of her regular suitors: there was a black-and-white dog named Reggie, who was a gentleman, but I put him over the fence around the pound (and got a rebuke from a policeman); there was a timid, skulking yellow Lab looking dog named Brandy; both were persistent pests.

The first time, our daughter Betsy let Honey spend the night outside, with (chiefly) a nearby Golden “Nugget”, and there were 11 puppies; after reading a library book I constructed a sturdy plywood whelping box (later sold to my friend Shaun), and when the mama dog could no longer clean up behind the pups (about three weeks old) I moved them all to a low fenced area in the back yard, near the picnic table I had bought from a father-son neighbor on our paper route.  Honey’s first litter came on March 4, 1991, when she was about 2 “They marched forth on March fourth”, and was born on our kitchen floor – I woke our youngest daughter, Irene, for this event; we were impressed that the newborn puppies were so tiny she could hold them in her hand.   Our sale of pups from that litter, by far the largest with 11 pups, met our needs after Davisville Credit Union failed and our funds were frozen – another instance of God’s provision..

After that Honey had three more small litters – once a neighbor’s chocolate Lab “Teddy” broke our basement window screen to get at her, and the issue was a lone male which we called “Sam” but the neighbor lady to whom we gave this fine black dog named him Beau.  After that we had her bred in our back yard with a crippled Golden named Luke, that a neighbor was keeping at her house for a friend, and gave the choice of that litter to the neighbor who had arranged the mating, selling the others.  The winter before Honey died, Ginny was ill, and Honey stayed by her bedside throughout.  Honey finally succumbed to a metastasized mammary cancer, resulting as we thought from the mis-mate shots she had; she had a persistent sore at the end of her beautiful tail, and several lumps on her flanks; the vet’s palpation revealed a large tumor in her abdomen, and at the proper time he lovingly gave the shot that ended her life; I buried her in our front yard, near her puppies and several of our other dogs, with her collar and tags.

A male from Honey’s first litter we named Bernie (in honor of our son); Bernie was a fine blond dog whom I refused to sell “no, not for a thousand dollars”.  Instead we kept this pup as a companion to Honey, and he was Irene’s dog (later given to Ginny when Irene figured out that dogs require feeding and vet care, beyond the cute and cuddly stage).  After he was “neutralized” (my word) by the vet, he grew to be a large-boned but svelte dog (he never exceeded 70 pounds), with rough coat, but unquestionably a pure-bred Golden.  Following his instincts as a hunter, Bernie slaughtered many animals both on our property and off it.  These included a seagull and a swan, a raccoon (he was a fearless dog) and a neighbor’s cat – they trapped the hapless creature under a car and killed it there (Ginny was taking both our dogs for a walk on leashes, and was mortified).  He often tried to catch the squirrels that proliferate on our property, but they always scampered up trees, out of his reach.  Both dogs enjoyed picking up rocks (retrievers, remember?) from our stony beach, both thrown in the water and loose; they would proudly bring these to shore and deposit them at our feet; we joked that Bernie single-handedly (pawedly?) created the causeway that eventually transformed the Rome Point “Hummocks” into an island at high tide.  In those days leash laws were largely disregarded, and Bernie and Honey had the run of our neighborhood, though they usually stayed at our house.  He sauntered up and down our street, and was called “the mayor” by neighbors.

Bernie was terrified of thunder and fireworks (probably from their loud, booming sound); we would come home after a thunderstorm or Independence Day celebration to find him cowering in the bathtub (only times he went there voluntarily).  In later years he developed the habit of using my workshop floor downstairs as his own latrine (we called it “the spirit of Bernie”; no doubt he hated this disgusting practice even more than we, and discipline didn’t cure it.

He became very arthritic, and it was painful for him to walk.  He was often somnolent, lying on the floor in front of our TV, but it was very sad to see this formerly life-filled dog become less and less functional.  He eventually lost the use of his hindquarters, and was incontinent and sometimes fell in the yard.  At the end, having fallen at the corner of our property, he was taken by request of caring neighbors by our town’s animal control officer, then to an animal hospital in the adjacent town East Greenwich.  Bernie spent that night in their able but expensive care, then the next few days at home; but after Ginny and I found that we were unable to give him the constant care required, and he was obviously suffering and humiliated by his plight, our vet finally gave Bernie the same shot that ended Honey’s life a few years before.  I buried him near the others, in a depression from which he had overlain the grass, with his collar and tags; that was fall, and I was superstitiously alarmed when the earth cracked around his grave after a seasonal thunderstorm, but he didn’t come back.  Bernie was 15-1/2, which is very old for a Golden; he was our last pet, as we didn’t want to go through puppy-hood again.