Chapter 14

THE BRICK BUNGALOW

 

Papa proposed that he would buy the lot in his name; we would each take a small wage and pay for the materials out of the borrowed money and Ada and I would pay the annual interest. The house was to be finished enough so that we could live comfortably, but I would later finish the rest of the work at my expense. If ever we wanted to sell the place the profit was to be divided. Late in 1940 we did sell the bungalow to George Gamber. After that settlement when the loan was repaid, papa cleared $250.00 that he had invested of his own money and I had $250.00 for the work I had added.

 

The lot was from the farm of Peter Kreider, on the east side of Bethany Road between Route 322 (Later East Main Street) and the road that would later be the extension of East Fulton Street in Ephrata. When we built the house it was in an open field. The house is now part of the Engle Body Shop complex. It is just south of the WGSA and WIOV radio stations. (The writing of this manuscript was finished in April of 1980. Just this week, the third week of July, as I am typing this material, I have discovered that this house is being moved, intact, to the southeast corner of the intersection of Bethany Road and East Fulton Street; i.e. a few hundred yards south of where it was built.)

 

Bungalow on Bethany Rd.

The house I planned was to have two bedrooms, each with a closet, with a bathroom between them, on the south aide of the house. The living and dining rooms with a kitchen to the rear was to be on the north side of the building. A small rear porch was to adjoin the kitchen on the northeast corner; all under one wood-shingle hip roof. There was to be a wide front porch across the front of the house.

 

To save expense we set the bricks on edge thereby using less bricks and less mortar; also less bricklaying labor. We did not sheath the house as would have been normal, but fastened the wall-ties directly to the studs. We had the five rooms and the hall plastered on rock lath. The two closets and the bathroom were lined only with rock lath. I was going to line the closets later with paneling and also the bathroom after the plumbing would be installed.

 

We had not drilled a well but had built a cistern for rain water in the basement, under the kitchen. A pitcher-pump brought the water to the sink. In excavating for the basement we had uncovered a spring of running water, which was piped to the roadside gutter. After we lived there a while, I took a range boiler, cut open at each end, and pushed it into the center of the spring and dug out the sand inside the casing. That little five-foot deep artesian well overflowed continually and eventually we used it for drinking water.

 

As I implied we had no plumbing. That, with a pressure water system, was to be installed later as we could afford it.

 

We never built a privy. I put a chemical toilet in one corner of the basement and we emptied the bucket in Peter Kreider's field.

 

For heating, we had a small six-plate coal range in the kitchen and an oil pot-burner space heater in the living room. The house was not efficient to heat since it had no insulation; not even sheathing. Before we moved out, I hadinsulated the ceiling with rockwool. There was only the plaster on the inside of the studs and the up-edged bricks to the outside. But we were comfortable. We moved in on April 1st, 1937. When we sold the place there was still no water system, bathroom plumbing, or central heating. Times were still hard and we had two children.

 

By the time the Ephrata Church was finished, Uncle Amos had a crew of six or seven men, and a lot of work lined up. He found the business to be more than he could handle in conjunction with his church work, so he turned the business over to Harvey Sauder, who quit his former job to superintend the church job. I continued to work for Harvey until the spring of 1940.

 

By the spring of 1940 my father was looking for something to do, and I was getting tired of the kind of work Harvey was taking. He had little new building; mostly repairing barns and pigpens.

 

The war in Europe had started the year before and as a result the economy of this country was improving. I suggested to Papa that we might earn a good wage and clear a small profit if we built a low cost house for speculation. He asked me where I thought to build. I told him that Akron seemed to be prospering and that I knew that his cousin Harry Reitz would sell a lot on Main Street between what is now Fourth and Fifth Streets. He told me to draw up a plan and make an estimate for a small frame house. He found he could borrow some money; so he bought a lot from Mr. Reitz and we built the house. It was better than working for Harvey Sauder.

 

As soon as the house was finished we sold it to Raymond and Edith Witmer. She Is Lehman Kopp's daughter. We had earned good wages and divided a nice profit. So Papa bought a lot for $300.00 from Mr. and Mrs. Stover on North Eleventh Street in Akron, just across the street from what is now Mount Zion U. M. Church. We started a house there in late summer of 1940 and before it was under roof we sold it to Robert and Lena Blumenshine.

 

I will now recount some of the things that happened in our family during the three and one half years we lived in the bungalow. Jay was almost four years old when we moved in and Arvilla was four months short of three years old.

Peter Rutt and I graded the front lawn with a homemade tractor and a hand scoop. He had cut down an old model T Ford to make the tractor. We hitched the scoop, intended to be pulled by horses, to his tractor. I was controlling the scoop with a pair of handles. My wife and children were watching from the front porch and when I dug in the scoop, the front end of the tractor came up off of the ground. They were afraid the tractor would upset and Peter would be hurt. We had no accident.

I had made a wide short bench for Ada’s wash tubs. It stood on the rear porch beside the wooden washing; machine. It was with that bench that Jay and Arvilla played "God and Jesus.” Jay would lie on top of the bench, which was Heaven, and Arvilla was under the bench; that was Earth. When Arvilla wanted to be God for a while Jay said, "You can't, you're too little and I'm older."

 

I had made a little "Kiddy-car" for Jay with some junk wheels. One day he had left it in the drive behind my car. I backed over it and smashed it flat. His mother said she saw me pick it up and hide it under the porch. I don't remember his reaction to the loss of the toy.

 

Ada kept her broom hanging from a string over a nail, inside the cellar-way. One day Jay got the idea to use it for a swing. He took hold of the broom and swung himself out over the steps. The string broke and the little fellow rolled all the way to the cellar floor. He wasn't hurt badly.

 

It was while we lived at the bungalow that I found my roadster was making too much trouble. I junked it for $25.00 and bought a 1929 Model A coupe from Garden Spot Motors in Lancaster. I raid $50.00 for it. Before we moved away I had traded the coupe for a 1929 Model A two-door sedan. The coupe was too small for a family of four.

 

In August of 1940 Ada's sister Anna asked our family to go with her for a few days vacation to Lake Wallenpaupack in the Pocono Mountains of Northeastern Pennsylvania. When we got home on a Friday that week Aunt Anna took Jay and his cousin, Glenn Horst, to Green Dragon Market. The boys ate a lot of raw peaches and tomatoes. When Jay got sick that night, we thought he had just upset his stomach, but by Saturday evening he was running a fever. Dr. Schantz saw him and said that he had the flu. By Monday he was still very ill and when his mother found he couldn't walk she became alarmed. Dr. Schantz had gone on vacation. I was working at Blumenshine's house in Akron. Ada sent for me and we decided we would consult a Dr. Reynolds who had a practice in Akron. He had a large practice and we had often considered having him for our family doctor. I went over to the doctor's office and told him about Jay's illness. When I said that his one leg gives 'way when he tries to walk the doctor said, "you go right home and bring that boy here. Now!"

 

The doctor gave Jay a thorough examination. Then he called a neurologist in Lancaster. We heard him say that he feared it was poliomyelitis. We at that time didn't know what polio was; if he had said "infantile paralysis" we would have known.

 

When he had finished on the phone he explained to us what he feared and what it was. That afternoon we took Jay to the Specialist in Lancaster. He confirmed the diagnosis. He sent us home and ordered Dr. Reynolds to put a cast on the leg from the hip to the ankle. The boy had much pain in his back, but in a few days the fever was gone.

 

Somewhere Dr. Reynolds had heard of the new "Sister Kenny Method" for treating polio. He took it upon himself to take off the cast the second day and instructed Ada in using hot-packs and exercising the leg. Gradually Jay improved but he could not walk. He was seven years old and we had to carry him around. Later in the winter he was fitted with a leg-brace and learned to walk again. He had completed the first grade at the Bethany School the year before, but could not start second grade.

 

Miss Weber, his second grade teacher provided him with books and made a few visits during the term, so he completed his second grade of school at home. He was adept at learning and his mother helped him as she could. That term Arvilla had to start first grade alone.

 

During the next years we took Jay to Philadelphia for refitting and replacing his leg-brace many times. His left leg atrophied and grew more slowly than the right leg. Eventually he had a two inch lift on his left shoe.

 

When Jay was a teenager and his bones had stopped growing he had a series of operations to lock the alignment of the left ankle. After the surgery he needed no brace but continued to have a built-up shoe. He is now forty-seven years old and walks with a slight limp. Beside Ada's terminal illness this last year, Jay having polio was one of the most traumatic incidents of my life.