Chapter 16

110 NORTH ELEVENTH STREET

 

After we had made settlement with Mr. Gamber for the bungalow, we had $250.00 net profit. With that and $50.00 we had saved, we bought the lot at 100 North Eleventh Street for $300.00. We borrowed $2000.00 from Nathan Myers, and after the house was nearly finished we gave him a mortgage for that amount. I worked alone on the house that winter; except for about two weeks that I employed old Will Hassler, the father of my playmate on the ash pile at East Akron School. (In all of my building, I was never an official employer; always working alone. For other trades I used sub-contractors).

 

N. Eleventh St., Akron, PA

I built a small one and one-half story frame house. From a small front porch on the southeast corner, the front door opened into a living room on the north side. The stair was at the west end of that room. The other half, or south side, was dining room and kitchen with a peninsular sink between them. The garage was attached to the rear with one bedroom over it. That room was entered at half-flight of the stair. At the top of the stairs, there was a small bathroom and two more bedrooms. Now we had borough water, a nice kitchen-sink, a full bathroom and a sewage disposal by a cesspool.

 

We had no furnace, but heated the whole house with a brown-enameled coal space heater. No more coal range; we had a used electric range. After we moved in we bought a six-month-old Hot Point refrigerator from Jake Weist, a dealer in Ephrata. Will Hassler's had traded it in to him for a larger one. That Hot Point is still running at our cabin at Wood Crest Retreat. We bought it on August 23rd, 1941. We moved into the house April 19th, 1941.

 

Shortly after we had moved, Ada's father, Reuben W. Horst, had a heart attack. He died on June 19th, 1941. That was the first one of my children's grandparents to die.

 

Because Mr. and Mrs. Nathan Myers were kind enough to lend us money to build the house, we invited them to supper one evening and to show them the house. They had to leave early because Nathan got severe leg cramp.

 

That summer we witnessed the greatest display of the aurora borealis that was seen locally for a generation. The flares and streamers reached to the zenith.

 

The rear of our lot adjoined the relocated CTC trolley-car right-of-way. One day I heard a crash and saw that the trolley car had hit an auto a few hundred yards below us where Orchard Street crossed the tracks. I went down to look and saw that it was bad. The impact caused a young girl to be partly thrown through an open window of the auto and the trolley car had sheared off the top of her skull. She had died instantly.

 

Arvilla, Jay, Bobby, and Guy

During the year that we lived on North Eleventh, Jay and Arvilla played a lot with two neighbor boys who lived across the street; Guy Hull, Jr. and Bobby Hufford.

 

That winter, on a Monday, the day after Pearl Harbor Day, December 7th, 1941, the United States declared war on Germany and Japan.

 

The next summer, two months after we sold our house by agreement and before we moved out, our third child was born; Donna Lou was born July 11th, 1942. When Ada went into labor, I began calling for Dr. Reynolds and no one could find him. Eventually our neighbor, Dwight Yoder, called Dr. Miller of Ephrata for me. Before he arrived Donna was born. Ten minutes later Dr. Miller drove up and Dr. Reynolds right behind him. Dr. Reynolds took over and I said that he had better go right up because the baby was already born. Dr. Miller was a little riled. Everything was fine and later Dr. Reynolds charged us only half-fee because he was late.

 

The year of 1941 was a busy one. I built a house for Rev. and Mrs. George S. Wolf at the west end of town on a lot on his farm just opposite the junction of Third Street and Main Street, Akron. Later in the year, after Grandpa Horst had died, I built a small frame house for Ada's sister Anna and her mother at the east end of Main Street. Both of these houses were built for time and material.My father helped on both of those houses as a self-employed worker.

 

Papa had also started a brick house for speculation on New Street; close to the Heel Factory. I helped on that and in February and March of 1942 we built a large chicken-house for Paul E. Weaver on East Main Street, just below Anna's house.

 

On April 2nd, 1942 Ada and I sold our house to Quillas Fahnestock and were to give possession on August 1st of the same year. They made immediate settlement and we paid four months rent. That gave me money to build another house. We sold for $3500.00 and cleared $1000.00 net. That was the most money we had until then.

So now, we were launched on a course that would produce more new NESTings than we had experienced while living in rentals.