Chapter 7

A NEW HOUSE

 

At some point after we had moved to the Welsh Mountain, Papa either had a buyer, or hunted one for the property on Bethany Road. He had always longed for the convenience of having electricity and there seemed to be no prospect of getting the lines in the near future. So the home was sold and plans were made for a new house for us to use after the term of service at the Mission.

 

Our New House on East Main Street

He bought a building lot on East Main Street in Ephrata; just east of the East End Planing Mill. He drew plans and after New Year of 1927 he made, in the shop at the Mission, all the window frames and sash for a new brick house. In the early spring a well was drilled and Papa began to build; first a long shop with garages on a lower level. As I remember it, the last few months of my junior year, Papa came along to Ephrata with me; or rather I rode with him because he used the car while I was in school. When school was over I continued to help building and so acquired my first real experience in construction.

 

By September of 1927 possession of our old home was given to the buyer and all our belongings were moved temporarily into the shop at East Main Street. The house was not quite finished so we also lived a few weeks in the shop. Grandpap stayed on at the Mission as a helper and later as a guest. Some years later he became ill and came back to our new house where he later died.

 

So now I lived in Ephrata and could either walk or ride my bicycle to school. The Ephrata School Board had just finished building a new High School building on Highland Avenue and our class of '28 was the first to use it.

 

Landis All Dressed Up

My senior year was uneventful. I was asked to help make the frames for staging the Senior Class Play. I was also allowed to help "back stage" at the play given in the Grand Theater. I played that arrangement "low key" at home because theaters and movie houses were taboo in our circles. Mamma was easily disturbed about bad influence on the morals of her only little boy.

 

At the Commencement Program on May 30, 1925, also held in the Grand Theater, I was the salutatorian. I was very timid and had little or no experience in public speaking and was sick with dread that day; but I survived.

 

Right after Commencement the whole class took a bus trip, as was then customary for the Ephrata High School graduating class, to Washington, D. C. Our principal, Mr. Winkleblech, and a veteran teacher, Miss Sadie K. Mohler, were chaperones. It was a four-day trip and the last one approved by the School Board. There was considerable misconduct in the rooming houses during our three nights in D. C. I don't think I misbehaved!

 

Through the last months of my schooling, Papa would ask, "Landis, what do you want to do after you graduate?" I always answered, "I don't know." At last he said, "I know what you'll do. You'll work for me. I'll round up some work and you'll learn a trade. After that, you can do anything else you want to, but you'll always have a trade to rely on." So that's how it happened that I became a carpenter.

 

Mama and Papa at the New House

There was a rich farmer from Hinkletown who had had two brick bungalows built on the north side of East Main Street, a few hundred yards west of our new house. Why he did not continue with the same builder for the next five houses I don't know, but Papa got a contract to furnish the "carpenter labor only" for another house in the row. They were all identical. Through the next years we built five. They are still there.

 

The day after I came home from Washington, the stone wall of the basement having been built by someone else, Papa was ready to start his part of the contract by laying the first floor joists. He had gotten me some tools and we went together to the job. We worked a few hours and then he asked, "What's wrong with you? Are you too tired?" I said, "Yes, we didn't sleep much for the last three nights in Washington." He said, "Well, go home and sleep and you can start tomorrow." The next day I felt fine and we worked together for the next four years until all building came to a stop because of the "Great Depression."

 

Papa employed another young man to help, but he gave me very careful instructions on each procedure. He said to me, "I have a contract for at least two of these houses and since they will all be identical, I want you to be in charge of the second one." He got some other jobs and employed a few other carpenters, but the second bungalow was in my charge. I felt very inadequate, but that house still looks like the others.

 

The next years, while we built the rest of the Burkholder bungalows, we also built two large stone houses in Coatesville for a Mr. Pete. Lipka. We worked ten hours a day and five on Saturdays. Those trips to Coatesville made long days. Over an hour driving time each way.

 

Landis (center) with Friends and his New Model A Ford

We used the 1919 Ford and there were usually five or six men. Also in the summer of 1931 we built a piece to an old stone farmhouse on a dairy farm of Henry Bechtel near Spring City. His son Amos had just married and was to live in the new part. That was the start of a close friendship between Amos and Arvilla Bechtel and my future wife Ada and me. By that summer I was engaged to Ada S. Horst of Hinkletown, PA.

 

I was eighteen years old when I began working for Papa and he was soon charging journeyman's wages for me. He told me that he would give me spending money until I was twenty years old and then he would pay me full wages and I could pay board to him. So after my birthday in September of 1929 I began receiving my own money; 55 hours a week at 55 cents an hour came to $30.25:a week. I was now twenty years old and felt I needed a car of my own. By October I had saved a few hundred dollars and Papa arranged a loan for me at the bank. On October 5, 1929 I wrote a check to the Ephrata Motor Co., the Ford dealer, for $525,00. I had bought a new 1929 Model A Ford Roadster with a rumble seat. Since I had never driven a gearshift car, only Model T's, I didn't want to drive my new car from the garage. I knew well enough how to shift gears but lacked practice. So I said to the dealer, "Would you deliver the roadster to my home on East Main Street?" He looked a little surprised; a twenty-year-old man not taking his car along! I put on a haughty air, just like a millionaire and said, "Just have it delivered." After it was delivered I took it east on route 322 as far as the Beartown hill and practiced driving. What a thrill! My own new car! I often wish that I would have kept it. They are worth thousands of dollars now. I junked it in 1937 for $25.00.

 

More Fun with the Ford

I never dated girls while I was in High School, but I had begun to notice a girl, Ada Horst, who attended the Ephrata Church. I of course had known the family for many years and one of her brothers, who was my age, was a friend of mine. In the autumn of 1928 I had arranged and taken her on a few dates, but discontinued because I was ashamed to take a girl out in Papa's 1926 touring car. All the other fellows had sedans or roadsters. The next summer my friend Peter R. Rutt, who used his father's Model A sedan, and I dated the Horst twins one weekend; he had Katy and I had Ada. That Sunday evening when I asked Ada for another date she said, "No." So I made her wait another year until I tried again. By then in 1930 1 had my own roadster, and she was ready, so we started dating and in a few weeks we were engaged.

 

In the fall of 1931 we set our wedding date for January 7th, 1932. I was still working for Papa and making good wages, but many people were out of work by that time because of the depression following the "market crash" of  '29.

 

Ada S. Horst and J. Landis Weaver

Ada and I found four rooms to rent in the house of a Mr. and Mrs. Frank Slick on Washington Avenue, just across the street from where I went to school for seven years. We had two rooms on the first floor and two rooms upstairs, with bathroom privileges only in an emergency. I paid the first month's rent of $10.00 on November 24th, 1931. On December the fifth I found a small cast-iron, six-plate range in Lancaster. For that I paid twelve dollars. I bought a nice walnut gate-leg table from Aaron Good's Used Furniture Store in Murrell for four dollars. Papa had some dealings with a man in Lancaster who had a new and used furniture store called "Trade-in Furniture." There Ada and I bought a new living room suite, a new bedroom suite, two new nine by twelve rugs and a new wooden washing machine driven with an electric motor, but with a hand wringer. This all cost $200.00 and I paid for it on December 11th, 1931. Because my Ford was not yet all paid, I borrowed $200.00 from my sister Mabel. From that day until about 1971, I was never completely out of debt.

 

On the morning of January 7th, 1932, Ada and I were married at the home, of Bishop Noah L. Landis in Neffsville. After a reception dinner at her home et Hinkletown, we took a three mile "Wedding Trip" from her home to our new NEST on Washington Avenue.