HOW IT USED TO BE

Last evening we experienced another power outage. With the power off we had to remember which light switches to turn off. We didn’t want to be awakened by lights when the electric came back on.

As I sat in the dark I started to think about how we never lost our electricity when we lived in Oregon. It’s a good thing too because turning the light switch in the kitchen on and off was a bit more involved than flipping a switch.

As I mentioned in an earlier post I was a little disappointed with our first house. I know it was only a rental but somehow I expected more. For example the light switch I just mentioned. Actually there was no switch at all. But there were wires! True, there were only two, a black and a white, but still I was used to a switch to turn lights on. In this kitchen I had to connect the wires that stuck out of the wall together if I wanted light. (Trust me I wanted to be able to see.) I will say my husband had made convenient little hooks on the end of the wire so keeping them together was easier.

Then there was the way the washer was plumbed. I wasn’t a plumber but I still knew that the way our washer drained was not exactly going to meet any code (there weren’t any). Not to mention it was just so wrong. Here’s what happened when our washer drained. It ran out the pipe that was sticking out the side of the house. So every time I did laundry it looked like out house was urinating. It was downright embarrassing to be standing outside talking to the neighbors and whoops the house starts peeing. No one ever mentioned it so I guess they had the same fella install their plumbing.

The floors in houses where a logger lived were also a sight to behold. Did I mention that Herman was a logger? The best way to describe the floor in our little place was as if someone with a hundred nails sticking out the bottom of their boots walked on it for years. And you know what? That is exactly what happened! Logger’s boots have nails on the bottom of them for traction in the woods and on logs. More nails means more traction. And the little nicety of taking your shoes off when you come inside was not ever going to happen here. Logger boots went to just under the knee and no man that worked in the woods was going to take his boots off to go in and out.

I also had a shock when the winter weather came. Winter on the Oregon coast came and went quickly. I was used to winter settling in around Thanksgiving and not easing it’s grip until late March. The area we lived in on the coast had about 6 weeks of winter. It was cold, with snow in the higher elevations. Occasionally snow fell where we lived but it mostly rained. The shock was when our water pipe which came from a spring in the mountain above us would completely freeze. No water! It was never frozen the full 6 weeks but it was about half that time. I had to carry water from the little branch beside our house for necessities. To shower we packed up and went to a public facility. I guess the folks who ran it waited all year for people like us.

That little house was always giving me surprises. After surviving the winter, getting a light switch installed, learning to live with a house that had no bathroom manners, I figured I had weathered the worst and could laugh about it. And then came the flying ants!

The flying ants were a real phenomenon not to mention scary and nasty too. These particular ants apparently had a previous lease on the place. I didn’t realize they were sleeping the whole time until they woke up. In the bathroom! Hundreds of hundreds of flying ants greeted me one morning when I opened the bathroom door. They hatched out of the walls and were going stir crazy in that small space. When I pulled the door open they came at me like an army. These ants must have been on steroids or at least multivitamins. They were the biggest flying ants I have ever seen. Their wings resembled bi-planes. I screamed like I was being attacked by an army. My screams got easy-going Herman shook up, until he saw it was only the return of the ants. He almost acted like he missed them. He calmly declared they would only be around for a week or so. Ten days at the most. He explained how they were hatching out, how it happened every year about this time- nothing to get upset about. He told me I would probably want to wait a bit to shower, you know give the little creatures time to get their wings and move out into other areas of the house. Did he think this was really calming me?

Or we could kill as many as we could. This was the route I took. I stomped, swatted, beat, and battered every place that even looked like an ant to me. Then I swept up the remains and waited for it to happen all over again. It was a long week and at the end of it I was sure of one thing. I hate flying ants!

But I have never hated old houses in spite of my first experience. I still notice old fixer-uppers and wonder what they would look like given half a chance.