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New Addition 1

2/10/2019

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     The addition to the house began one summer day in August 1999.  The addition had actually begun sometime in July with elaborate stakes the ground.  I worked on those stakes.  I pulled them and remeasured the spots for them to go in again, and again and again.  I started in July, or June, it could have been June.  I think I was just nervous about starting the whole process, so I kept re-pulling the stakes.  My Mom and Dad were visiting in August.  One day my Dad said what do you need to get started?  I told him all that had to be done first.  Like re-measuring the stakes; tearing down the sun porch; and how do you make a foundation wall over the middle of a cistern?  To be honest I had already torn down the sun porch to reveal the cistern.  Dad said, see you already tore down the sun porch, but he glossed over the cistern with something like let’s worry about the cistern later.  Later was after he was gone and it wasn’t that much later, but the cistern is a whole subject by itself.
     I discovered, when I fell through the floor, the only thing holding the sun porch together was the indoor, outdoor carpeting.  I mean really, who builds a sun porch (knowing the rain will enter the room through the screens) with pressed wood.  Even Plywood would have been stronger, although the results would have been the same.  I removed the green carpet (like you would use on cement, or an outside green at a Minnie Golf) and immediately fell through the floor.  Now it was a good two and a half feet to the ground below and it hurt, (my feelings if nothing permanent.)  So, we tore tear down the porch.  It went down fast, as I recall, considering that I had my mad up from the fall.  I reused the two by sixes (that I fell between in the sun room) on the basement floor.  The same person who used the pressed wood on the floor in the sun room had redone the basement.  It was all built with pressed wood paneling which as all the rage in the fifties or sixties, maybe even the seventies.  It was re done in the eighties, and with walls everywhere in the basement.
     The first thing I did was rip everything out and I discovered (1) the obvious bump in my kitchen, (and on the second floor as well) was a result of an old house settling on an improper wall in the basement (now you would think a contractor, the person who had owned the house at one time and was responsible for the basement remodeling and the sunroom addition, would know that) and (2) a disintegrating rafter under the kitchen floor which was put in the day the house was built and was in direct line to water traveling from the flat roof above the kitchen to the rafter below it. 
     Now in fairness we should have known about the water damage considering the great Perry creek flood happened on Friday night as we were moving in the last of our heavy things—the washer and dryer.  The rain came down in sheets.  It was a monsoon outside and it came down on the washer and dryer and our heads as we tried to move in.  My future brother in law (I never questioned his love for my sister after that) helped get them from the truck to the wooden stairs, up them and across the floor in the sunroom, (that’s right, the same floor that would collapse with me) to the back door through rain coming through the screens (refer back to the ability of screens to hold back water.)  Did I mention that the Perry Creek would go over its banks the next day?  A day that would include the start of the horse racing season which I was the announcer and the start of a new job as news director at KSCJ radio.  That could have been the reason we moved the last of the heavy stuff on Friday night, I don’t remember.  Now technically I wasn’t supposed to start as the news director until Monday.  That was the deal and I was sticking to it, even with the Perry Creek flood.  I didn’t make many friends that day (except for the people at the horse track.)  I had one reporter who was part time and I figured she would cover the flood.  She called me in the booth at the horse track to tell me of her consternation, anger really, over the fact that she had to cover the flood.  It‘s good that she got on the phone to cover the flood, but it’s bad that she quit the next day.  I started my first day as the news director knowing that I would have to hire a news person. 
     The next day was the day Sherry and the kids carried the last of the boxes up the wooden stairs, (stairs you could have gotten with the purchase of a new trailer home) across the sun room floor and into the debris in the kitchen.  I found out about the debris in the kitchen on the phone in the booth at the horse track.  It seems the ceiling had collapsed from all that rain the night before.  It was right over the spot where the rafter under the kitchen floor was also getting water.  Although I didn’t discover the rafter for years, I knew immediately (because of the phone call) that our new kitchen was a mess.
     We should have known something was up by the weird way the kitchen was installed with a ceiling that was two feet below the rest of the house, and that if you took the fake ceiling panels down (like the ones used in a basement) you would find an odd wood structure built just where the flat roof was leaking. 
The flat roof had a door next to it on the second floor.  The door and flat roof were designed to help you bring objects to the second floor that wouldn’t fit up the winding stairway, things like mattresses and box springs.  We had roped and brought up the mattresses, as we knew we would have too, a week or so before the great flood.  I had checked out the flat roof before we bought the house with my trusty side kick, my son.  David was about 12 at the time.  During our inspection of roof, we discovered a tennis ball on the flat roof that had somehow sunk into the gravel and tar and was trapped there.  I didn’t think much of it, but David did and went back out there by himself and pulled up the trapped ball and threw it from the roof.  That was not the exact cause of the leakage that brought down the ceiling, but it sure didn’t help.  The fact that it was a major storm, that it was shoddy job fixing it up from another cave in and the tennis ball sized indention all worked in concert to bring the ceiling down… again.  Now I knew at least why he had opted for the hung ceiling.  It covered a world sin.  We put it up again over the weird wood patches, but the ceiling still leaked.  For years we thought the tennis ball caused the problem, but it was after I tore the sun room down and discovered the bad rafter that I blamed the previous owner: the contractor.
     We re-did the basement so that I could use it.  As I mentioned, the joist had to be fixed because it was crushed on one end due to the flooding.  I assumed I would have to replace the joist and rebrick the outside.  After I had done my due diligence with contractor’s I finally found one who would rebrick the basement for 1500 dollars.  I thought that was a little much, but I hired him anyway.  Now to keep the price down to 1500 dollars I agreed to work as his grunt doing all the digging and hauling all the bricks.  We would go down to the old foundation and start from there.  Well, there wasn’t an old foundation.  There wasn’t any foundation at all.  I found out that when these houses were built in 1917, they basically dug out a basement leaving a dirt floor and then started laying brick on the dirt.  Now I don’t know the process completely, but they dug the basement about four feet smaller than the house, laid brick on the dirt around but away from the basement, bricked up to the main floor and then built everything after that.  They then went back to the basement and rounded the basement wall and held it all together with cement.  The foundation was nonexistent.  We propped the existing joists Including the bad one, dug down about 8 feet, poured a cement foundation (for the corner we were doing) and bricked up from there.  I had always intended to brick the whole way around my house, but the 1500 dollars stopped me and now, at least, I have a foundation under about 10 feet my house.  Suffice it to say I fixed the joist, or rafter depending on where you’re standing and went on to redo the rest of the basement.
     As I mentioned I put in the two by sixes down on the on the cracked cement floor in the basement (a basement that was apparently poured in over time.)  I naturally put them down on end so that the floor would be 5 and 1/5 inches higher.  (Don’t get me started on why they are called 2x6’s, a fact that would prove to be a problem later when the real 2x4’s we’re matched up with the new 2x4’s which were really 1 and ¾ by 3 and 1/2’s.)  I nailed down ¾ inch flooring which was brought the floor to over 6 inches above the rest of the cement floor.  The raised floor is interesting conversation piece that I have stubbed my toe on many times.
I was putting the walls in the basement when one the great stories of all time happened.  My first grandchild was helping.  Now she was about 3 at the time and ever since she was a little baby, we took her everywhere with us.  If one of us was going to Menard’s, we would stop and get Bailey.  In fact, it was at Menard’s that I found a Christmas present from Bailey to her Grandma (Sherry.)  It was a carrousel that played music.  Bailey and I had a long talk about how important it was to keep it a secret.  Now I don’t know if it was ever a secret but Sherry and Bailey both swore to me that Bailey didn’t tell.  So, with her little sister upstairs, she was down in the basement helping me put up walls.  I gave her a hammer and she was putting nails in the wall that didn’t connect to anything.  (I pulled them out later.)  At one point I was bent over the wall that I was working on.  I laid the wall out, hammered the studs together and then Bailey and I would push them up, in place and then go work on the next wall.  Anyway, I was bent over and sitting on the floor hammering one of them together.  I thought Bailey was hammering in nails to whatever and she said to me (who knows what goes through a child’s mind) “Now this will only hurt for a minute.”  I said “Ok.”  Then I thought, wait, what?  At that moment she hit me in the head with the hammer.  I fell forward to the floor.  In cartoons they always show little stars and choo choo trains going around in a person’s head after they have been hit in the head.  I’m here to tell you that I saw little stars and choo choo trains in my head for a minute.  I then took Bailey by the hand and staggered up the stairs.  I said I thought it best if I continued, on my own, for a while. 
     With the stakes sufficiently measured, with the sun room torn down, and the decision on the cistern put off until another day there was no reason not to get started with the addition.  I tried but my Dad prevailed, and I started it that day in August, 1999.
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Arthur 2

2/2/2019

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             We lived in Arthur for about 4 years.  Before we came it had no telephone service.  There were a couple phones in town at the restaurant and at the court house.  The second was for official business and the first was for, well, everything else.  The rest of us had no phones in our homes.  Today everyone has a cell phone they carry around in their pocket.  The big joke around here today is that we should go to New York City since everyone is throwing away burner phones.  But as I was saying, except for the two, there were no phones in homes or businesses in Arthur except for the two.  After we had been there for a time phones came to town and caused a stir.  My Mother tells of all the pranks that used to be played on one another on the new phones. 
                One time, when the jokes were particularly bad, Dad decided to get back at one of pranksters.  This rancher had a phone and was known for his calls late at night.  Anyway, Dad and Arnold MacKeg were coming back to town late one night after a football game and decided to get him back.  They rolled off the highway and into his yard.  They swung their car lights from the barn and onto a corral full of cattle. They left the lights there.  It wasn’t long until the owner/rancher burst from his home totting a gun in one hand and fingering the buttons on his shirt with his other hand.  He yelled “What are you guys up to?”  They said something about counting his cows.  (Which is not allowed since it is the same thing as asking him how much he was worth.)  But this night they all got a good laugh out of it and the pranks gradually wound down.  Why they laughed is lost on me now but laugh they did.
                My dad and several of his ranch friends went to Ogallala for a meeting of the Masons.  It was at that time that he and his friends were asked to join.  Several of them were already Masons.  Its fair to ask how he had so many friends already.  Well he played ball with many of them during his high school days, and even went to school with several more at a tech related high school in South West Nebraska.  It was during this trip to Ogallala that they elected officers.  One of them, who would become a prominent rancher in the area, was elected Master of Arms.  His job was to take his sword and stand by the door, to guard it and basically miss the meeting.  They told him if someone came late, to listen to the password and let him in.  Perhaps they for got to tell him about the password, or perhaps a late comer forgot the password, or perhaps the new master at arms just got bored, but he knocked on the door.  When they answered the knock, he said such and such had come to the meeting.  He asked if he should let him in or just run him through.  I’m assuming there was no blood shed that night, but they all got a laugh out of it.  The secrecy laws of the Masons are well known, but this story was too good to be kept from us, so it became a story that was trotted out from time to time with the family and we laughed uproariously at the punch line.
                When we first moved to Arthur the main power plant was a generator.  Everyone was hooked up to it.  Whether you were inside a house or out, Mom told me, you heard the whump, whump, whump of the generator.  If your lights were on, they went from bright to dim in perfect time to the whump, whump, whump.  Mom told me it was exciting to see power poles march over the sand hills to the little town.  When the REA finished, all the residents were hooked up to power and the lights didn’t dim any more.  The whump, whump, whump of the generator stopped and nobody missed it although it is still talked about with nostalgia.
                I got my first horse in Arthur.  My Grand Dad had a ranch north of us about 100 miles.  He was continuing to make the conversion from horses to tractors at the time and didn’t need as many.  It was a young Indian pony, a black and white pinto, who someone (probably my Grand Dad) named Jocko.  My sister got her first horse also though I don’t remember its name because we were about 4 and 7 at the time.  Dad brought a cow pony he used from the ranch and completed the set with horse for my Mom.  The idea was that the four of us would ride out into the sand hills every night which I don’t remember doing.  We probably did ride our horses a few times, but Docpop (a name I called my Grand Dad) eventually took them back to the ranch.  When ever we went to the ranch, I always rode Jocko.  I remember when I was nine or ten, I rode Jocko with my sister on her horse, my cousin Devin on Red, and probably my cousin Linda on Princess.  We rode them at a walk from the barn over a bridge on the wounded knee creek (which Ken, a man who worked for my Docpop, later that summer or perhaps the next one, fell into the creek on a self-propelled combine,) up a sandy hill (which was impossible to get up with a car unless you got up to speed early and bounced all the way up) and onto the high plains to the end of the ranch.  I was afraid to go much faster then a walk with any horse.  Occasionally I would trot and bounce all over the place.  I was nearly thrown off several times, so I could only imagine what would happen if I went faster then a trot. 
You’ve heard of the old saying that you should not run a horse back to the barn?  The reason was that horses, if you ran them to the barn, would always run to the barn, whither you wanted them to or not.  Anyway, we ran them back.  First Devin opened-up on red, then it was Linda’s turn and finally my sister Julie blew by me.  I don’t know if I was more afraid of being thrown off or being left behind but the decision was made for me as Jocko knew that he didn’t want to be left.  We jumped from a walk to a cantor completely by-passing the trot.  I held on with both hands to the saddle horn.  But much to my surprise Jocko had a very smooth cantor.  His gallop was even smoother.  When we finally caught up to Devin, Jocko was going full out.  It was thrilling.  Docpop told me that Jocko was mine until he sold him.  Or maybe Mom sold him to buy a piano.  I don’t remember.  But after I galloped on him, I never knew what a thrill was. 
I didn’t learn about short coupled horses until later, that is, a horse that isn’t so smooth when it runs.  I leaned all about it on another pinto; a brown and white pinto pony named Dixie.  She was much smaller then Jocko, in fact she was the mother of a half Shetland and full-size horse or maybe it was Penney that was the mother (I really don’t remember.)  Penny was a female horse Docpop had bought in Mankato.  Anyway, the foal was as mean as a snake and almost as big.  His father was a Shetland stud and was part of Docpop’s plan to make all his horses smaller for the grand kids.   It wasn’t until Docpop bought Topper, a Shetland gelding, that he saw the error in his thinking. Topper was a stubborn, well, really-stubborn horse and Docpop found out that most Shetlands were the same way.  But that was after his ity bity stud sired several colts and then ran into a barbed wire fence.  There were no tears shed at the loss of that stallion.  To make matters worse (or better,) the two colts grew up to be almost as big as their mothers.  So that experiment ended, but I did find how short coupled Dixie was and I forever rode her at a walk.  Penny, on the other hand, I never rode at all, but she is a topic all by herself and will be dealt with at another time.
Long after we had moved from Arthur, to Lincoln, to Mankato, and to Cedar Falls, Doc (by then I called my Docpop that) still had an old wooden phone in the ranch house.  That is a wooden phone hooked up to a party line.  (You try calling your girl friend on a party line.)  Ken Childs, who owned the ranch over the hills from Doc, had a part time job taking care of the phones.  I understand when the phones were first put in, they used barbed wire tacked to the top of a fence line for the lines to each ranch house.  They were always breaking down when a length of fence was compromised by a horse or cow, a flood, or a bird.  When the line was put up on telephone poles the number of times that a line went dead was vastly reduced.  It was after that that Ken stopped working for the phone company.  However, it was on one such trip to our ranch house for the phone company that Ken Childs invited us to a pot luck at their home.  It was to be a gathering for the Four H kids, or something like that.  We were invited guests, and all that we were told bring was a table setting for us all, but Mom wasn’t sure of the protocol and brought something to eat.  To be fair, it was a tough decision by Mom because we hadn’t been paid yet, there was nothing in the house, and we were invited kind of late.  So, we brought buttered bread.  Image how the buttered bread looked amongst all the good food at the well-attended event and you can begin to understand how mortified my Mom was.  I asked my Mom, as only a dutiful 11 or 12-year-old son would ask, how the buttered bread was going over, or where was the buttered bread and was promptly shushed into submission.
As I said, we had a wooden phone party line when a pal and I spent a summer before our senior year in high school working on the ranch.  We had a special ring, maybe a long and three shorts.  That long and three shorts rang in all the houses on our party line, as did all the special rings set up for the other party lines members.  We never answered the phone because a long and three shorts never rang at our house until it did one night.  I mentioned that we were on a party line and in our cabin and every other ranch on the party line heard the long and three shorts ring.  One of us picked up the phone and as it turns out it was for me.  My girlfriend called me, and we must have talked for a long time and said some intimate things.  After we hung up, the long and three shorts ring rang again.  I thought it must be our lucky night as I answered it.  On the other end of the line was a falsetto saying how much she but probably he loved me, made kissing sounds and the phone went dead.  It was then I realized that I had been pranked by Bob, a boy at the main ranch house, and I swore never to use that blankety blank telephone again.
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    Doug Johnson is currently producing Stories of the Heartland, writing this blog and making personal appearances.

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