Ten-Oh-Two

Day One. . .

(The Fireworks)

So, here we are July 6th, 1979, homeowners! I had always expected to own my own home. Michael hadn't really considered it as a possibility.; Now it was real. Not only were we getting married in a few months, but we had a place to live and it was ours.

The Independence Day fireworks display in our new town had been delayed due to inclement weather. (I hesitate to refer to Norristown as my new town, because, in reality, I am the fourth (possibly fifth) generation of women in my family to live there.); The new date was July 6th. Norristown does their fireworks display in a sports stadium six blocks from our house. "Our house, our house" that was my new magic mantra. We went out for our date, parked the car at our house and planned to walk down the hill to the fireworks. We never got there. We went into our house and made our own.

Michael's 25th birthday was the next day, July 7th. He spent the better part of the afternoon mowing our lawn with a resurrected used lawn mower that my dad had donated to our cause. Michael smiled the entire time. And to this day he still smiles a lot when he mows the lawn. I still tease him about looking far too happy when he does yard work.

It would have been a perfect day except that I had the rather dubious assignment of getting Michael to his parents' house for his surprise birthday party. I didn't think the surprise party was a good idea and had told his mother about my misgivings. In the end I had given in to her superior knowledge of her son's likes and dislikes. Big mistake, if I hadn't been standing between Michael and the exit, he would have left! (Fortunately he never blamed me for the incident.)

Before we could even think of cleaning or painting our house, my brother, Tom had a friend with an emergency. Madeline had given up the lease on her apartment effective July 1st and her new place wasn't going to be ready until August 1st. She had a place to stay.; She just needed a place to store her furniture. I agreed to let her store her things in our house, but I did feel a bit bullied. Transactions involving my brother often left me feeling that way. Madeline was not the sort of person that I would voluntarily associate with. Someday I may write a book titled John's Wife and the Paperboys. Did I mention that my brother used to be a (substitute) paperboy?

Madeline's furniture was neatly stacked up in the living room and her refrigerator was plugged in. We had ice cubes while we evaluated and planned. And we certainly had a lot of planning to do.

But first we had to empty the contents left behind by the former owner. Luckily, trash collection was free. The worst items were the heavy musty smelling sofa bed and the oil drum that had been modified into a wood burning stove. We filled the entire street frontage of our house with this abandoned junk. We gave the ancient Amana side-by-side refrigerator to a friend of my father's to repair and use in his garage.

The next thing that we needed was a reliable general contractor. The earlier section of my story Before the Early Years may have led you to believe that we were buying a house in move-in condition. That was not the case. This house had had six owners in its twenty-four year existence and obviously no one had lived there long enough to bother taking care of things. Rather than explain all of the details, for now I'll just list what needed to be replaced: all three basement windows, all three inside exterior doors, the entrance shed (miniature mudroom) including all three windows and the door, outside cellar entrance concrete stairs, and one aluminum storm window. At least we had time to get the work done before we moved in to the house. We did hire someone that my father knew of and the work was completed, although not to our complete satisfaction. Nothing was exactly wrong with the job, it just wasn't what we expected to end up with. Corners had been cut needlessly to save us money, as if we were fixing the place up to just resell it. We learned a valuable, but not horribly expensive, lesson about verbal contracts.

Then came the cleaning. Luckily, I had several very good friends that were happy for us and extremely willing to help out. The bathroom was a disaster. I'd seen cleaner restrooms in gas stations. The inside of the oven looked like a greasy cave. And don't get me started on the burner drip trays. (After Linda cleaned it to a sparkly shine we discovered that the oven didn't work and one of the burners had two settings, high and off!) The grout between the kitchen floor tiles was brown not black but the best surprise of all was that underneath the worn dirty burnt-orange wall to wall carpet we had hard wood floors.

The hallway became our favorite spot to sit. The ceiling light made it the most convenient place to sit with a nice glass of cool beverage and the central location made us less visible from the street. We went through a vast quantity of powdered drink mixes.

We had the usual problems with the former owners color sense. I would never have thought of school bus yellow as a bedroom wall color. The oddest thing was the checker board pattern on the larger bedroom's wall made up of mirror tiles with red and blue carpet squares. The colors didn't really matter. After we scrubbed every wall, ceiling and window to remove the soot and grime we needed to repaint.

It was fun getting color charts and decided what color we wanted in which room. It was fun going to the paint store and buying the paint and tools to do the job. It was fun carrying everything into our house. That's where the fun ended. Michael and I are not destined to be painters. The work in progress resembled a Three Stooges or Marx Brothers movie. It was August. It was hot. It was humid. The paint smelled terrible. The living rooms walls looked pink until they dried completely. We were working at night by the light of a florescent light fixture lying on the floor. It's amazing that the paint job looked as well as it did. Oh, and of course, everything needed more than one coat of paint. My mother, bless her heart, painted all of the woodwork and window trim for us.

The first thing we bought for the house was a dehumidifier for the basement. Removing the dampness made the basement feel cooler and got rid of the residual musty smell left by the old sofa bed.

Neither of us were living independently. So we had to discuss what we had and what we needed. At least we didn't need everything. We had two complete (for the day) stereo systems, two televisions, two chest of drawers, a dresser, two sewing machine, pots, pans, dishes, flatware, Tupperware and kitchen gadgets. Michael's classic 1950's kitchen table and chairs had been allegedly donated to a good cause by Michael's father. Time to go shopping. . .

I don't like to shop. I never did. The only thing worse than shopping is talking about shopping. Shopping annoys me in general, unless I'm with someone that I truly enjoy, who truly enjoys shopping. We had never shopped on such a vast scale and it was very stressful. Luckily, Michael was able to articulate his preferences to me well enough so that some the items were found without his having to be with me every minute.

At last the deliveries began, we had a kitchen set. My mother volunteered to unpack and wash all of my kitchen hope chest items that had been stored in their attic. My kitchen item collection had been started by my paternal grandmother, Viola (nee Blades) Scheid. For my tenth birthday she had started to collect flatware with Betty Crocker coupons for me. I had a very full service for twelve including grapefruit and iced tea spoons. It still makes me a little sad that she died before I had occasion to use them, but I do remember being excited and grateful when she would show me each new piece and thanking her. And I know that she knew that I truly loved them, and her.

We had decided to go with wall-to-wall carpet, despite the fact that the house had hardwood floors. We selected a taupe color. The carpet installers showed up without carpet for the smaller bedroom. This meant that we would have to delay moving Michael's possessions into the house until the carpet finally arrived.

The next delivery was our bed. It was a very strange experience shopping for a box spring and mattress with Michael. I felt really odd lying down to test them out in the store. My anxiety level was high enough that nothing was going to seem comfortable, but we did manage to select one. We had decided to use the large of the two bedrooms to sleep in and the smaller bedroom as Michael's den.

Finally the den carpet was installed. Michael needed a separate room to house his possessions. He had at least 500 vinyl records albums and more books than the Book-mobile. The smaller of the two bedrooms was designated as Michael's den. By the time he added his drafting table and electric piano, the room was full.

I had been collecting assorted decorations for the various flat surfaces of my first home for several years. I had several beautiful ceramic vases and jars created for me by talented friends among other things. Unfortunately, they were not in my parents attic when I went to get them. The mystery of this disappearance remains unsolved to this day.

We still weren't living in the house. Michael was staying there on weekends rather than commute back and forth to his parents house. During the paint odor period, Michael stayed in my brother's old room at my parents house. My brother was living with his second fiancée, Robin, and her son, David, at the time.

At last it was time to work out the details of our wedding. We got our marriage license at the local court house. I started calling local Justices of the Peace to try and schedule our nuptials. All of the Justices in our immediate area had stopped performing marriage ceremonies. The nearest one was in Conshohocken. He did not work on Saturday. Our wedding date had to be changed to Friday, September 14, 1979.

csp 03-02-01

Our tale continues on my next installment titled Here Comes the Bride

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