GRANDMOTHER EDWARD'S HOUSE IN HAMILTON

This blog may only appeal to architectural minds, but it was a good house to spend holidays and vacations in.

I'm not exactly sure when my mother's parents moved from the farm house with no running

water and an outhouse to the much larger house in town (Hamilton). But I know my mother was

born in the farm house and there are photos of her at the farm house when she appears to be 6 or 7 and then photos at the new house where she looks to be 9 or 10.

So sometime between 1923 and 1926 they all moved to town and grandmother's new house. And sometime after that and before I was born the front porch was screened in.

Grandmother Edwards (GE) was very involved with the Methodist church (in background of

photo) and it happened to be right next door across the gravel driveway (gravel strips leading into the double garage which was not attached to the house).

The garage had two heavy wooden sliding doors that moved either way to get out one car or the other - I can only ever remember one car. Also inside the garage were the cane fishing poles and a tool bench and the watering cans to water the flowers as GE had an extensive flower garden which she was quite proud of.

During much of the year you would find fresh cut flowers on the dining room table. And I believe that my mother said GE did all the flowers for their wedding at her house and I'm sure flowers for numerous church functions through the years. From the side door of the garage (my uncle John always said it like "gare age") a side walk lead to the screened-in back porch past the gunny sack swing (filled with leaves) hanging from the biggest tree in the yard. To the left of this sidewalk was GE's flower garden and vegetables at times also (the best tasting tomatoes of my life!) and to the right was a large from yard where the chickens ran around after getting their heads chopped off. It's hard to believe that they let us watch such an event, but life was more real back then and you learned a lot about life as a child in a farm community.

The back porch had a slight slope and surrounded the kitchen on two sides, the one toward the garage and the back side. I suppose the slope allowed any water that rained in to drain but I don't think anyone ever said why it was that way. On the back side of the porch was some equipment for churning milk in my early years and it seems like on the garage side there was a freezer at one time. GE also had a meat locker at a storage facility downtown to hold the beef that was slaughtered and packaged in Emporia. My grandfather and later my uncle John raised registered black Angus cattle and we ate some form of beef or pork three meals a day when at GE's house. We also took a quarter of beef back to Oklahoma from each trip to Kansas, so I had beef at home as well. This probably accounts for my currently not liking beef as well as other things - that and the carcinogenic factors with red meat. I wonder if Kansas beef from my earlier years (when cattle were fed more natural stuff) was such a problem?

From the back porch door a sidewalk led past more flowers (always hydrangeas) outside the

dining room windows and around to the front on the front screened-in porch. On the front porch was a glider, which is an outdoor couch that moves back and forth at level like a swing. The front porch had two doors into the house, the main one to the left led into the dining room and small sitting area by the stairs and the one on the right (which was always locked) led into the living room.

Inside the main front porch door was the stairway immediately on the right and the large dining room table on the left. I can remember as many as 10 people seated at this table on holiday meals. Past the stairway to the right was a small couch and chair and a storage area under the stairs on the right and GE’s china cabinet on the right. On top of the china cabinet was a chiming clock that we could hear through the night if we woke. It chimed on the hour and the half hour as I remember. Just past the china cabinet was a door into GE’s bathroom and straight ahead lead into the large living room where we played cards (hearts, canasta and later bridge) and board games and opened presents at Christmas. GE’s bedroom was adjacent to the living room on the back side of the house. It had glass doors that closed when needed. On the far west side of the living room was another door to the outside which was seldom used and remained locked. The porch outside was the length of the north side of the house but never used in my memory. GE’s bathroom had one of the only two tubs in the house so often some of the children’s baths would be downstairs. I once got into big trouble for going to pee in her bathroom while my cousin, Charlene, was taking a bath. How’s a guy with no sisters supposed to learn anything about girls anatomy? (She was probably 10 and I was 8!) Also got in trouble for figuring out how to turn GE’s piggy bank upside down to remove quarters. I gave my brother, Mark, and my two cousins their fair share of the proceeds, but my younger cousin let the word slip out.

Back to the dining room, past the table led into the kitchen where GE spent a lot of time cooking always breakfast and lunch or dinner. We had typical ranch breakfasts with sunny-side up eggs and bacon or link sausage and toast and home-made jelly (my favorite was pear honey, which for sure had more sugar than pears). When we would fish in the evenings (you could only go if you took a nap), she would fry the fish for breakfast the next morning – good stuff! The kitchen had the stove on the east side, the sink with a hand pump from the well on the south side, cabinets for dishes and the mixer and Foley food mill and meat grinder storage on the north side and the refrigerator and a door to the basement on the west side. Also on the west side was a small broom closet and mounted on the wall, the Daizy can opener. The kitchen table had four chairs and any larger group ate in the dining room. The basement door led down a steep wooden stairway with a rickety pipe railing to a dank and dark smallish basement where I can remember some canned fruits and jellies being stored. It wasn't the kind of place to go hide or play - just a place to peer into.

GEs house was a house of four gables, all being part of the roof structure and each over one of the upstairs three bedrooms except the one over the upstairs bathroom. Having only one bathroom upstairs was a significant improvement over the two-hole outhouse at the farm house. The stairway up to the second from was an L-shaped left turn

with a small landing half-way. It was carpeted in the center of each step with about 6" of wood on each side. At the very top step in the back corner on the right side was a wooden plug in a hole. We were always told that it was a mouse hole and thus we moved quickly by. The south bedroom (pictured in the gable photo) belonged to Grandmother Werts (GEs mother) who was alive until I was 12. The windows of that room looked out toward the driveway and the garage and I remember one particular story about GM Werts, who was a very proper Pennsylvania Dutch woman. When she was in the last weeks of her life, she was confined to her bed and could only be lifted out of bed to the nearby chair. One day just as the farm hands and Uncle John were arriving for lunch, GE looked out the window and said "There comes Morey, we can get him to help lift you out of bed." GM Werts said emphatically, "Not Morey!" as she had no intention of anyone who wasn't family entering her bedroom.

We always stayed in the east room, which to me was the largest but probably was about equal to the south room. Looking at the photos of the house and subtracting the width of the stairs, they appear to be an exact match including windows and gable. Also the photo show the extra detail that GF Edwards had done on the house for his young bride. (Either that or there is the likelihood that she insisted on the details herself, knowing the firmness of the decisions I saw her make in my lifetime.) The east room had a double bed and as I remember a twin bed or a roll-away. The windows all had spring roller pull down shades and lace curtains. What I remember doing the most in the east room was two things: taking naps so we could go fishing and thunder and lightning storms which were more than exciting with windows on three sides.

The south side had the small bathroom with a claw foot tub. I remember it was a pleasant pastel green and had porcelain handles on sink and bathtub. Uncle John had either been born without a gall bladder or had had it removed and he was always a slight yellowish-orange in color and the bathroom always had a slightly strange aroma probably related to his metabolic situation. He also had had polio as a child and wore a several inch lift on one of his shoes. This prevented him from riding horses on the farm.

I cannot remember how, when the Shannons and the Edmondson (each with four people) visited for holidays while GM Werts was still living, we all found places to sleep. But I know it happened.

The final memory I have of GE's house was what I used to do when it was evening and everyone else was gathered in the living room and I needed something from upstairs. I would turn the light on and go upstairs and turn the hall light on and then the east room light. Then when I had what I needed, I would race back down the stairs at break-neck speed as if the boogey man was right behind me.

We had a lot of good times in GE's house - maybe more there than anywhere else.