GROWING A HOME

GROWING A HOME
The story of a city house that moved to the country.

This story is set in the late 1950s to the mid 1960s. To appreciate this era, you have to understand it was in a time when there were no zoning laws in our county in Missouri. It was of simpler times when neighbors didn't seem to outwardly worry about what you were doing next door. Of when we were young and full of hope and there were no county officials to tell us we could not GROW our HOME.

This is of our experience of buying a city house and moving it to the country. It is about hiring a house mover and all the crazy things that went with the task before us.

I want to tell this story because I think there is still hope in our country for young people to work around and through these restrictive laws and appease the neighbor who is always looking over his/hers fence sure that you are going to put a HOG FARM next door. Of course today, that Hog Farm means thousands of stinkers. Not just a few oink-oinks. I guess I have to concede that some zoning is good. But with little or no money we took a chance and bought a house for about the same price of an old used car and then had it moved. In the process, we built a foundation not only for the house, but for our lives too.

To appreciate this story I call GROWING A HOME, I'll start it in 1958, struggling to make ends meet, my wife recovering from polio, two small children, and a hole in the ground.

Living over a cave

Next door to our home where we live now, located northwest of Springfield Missouri, is FANTASTIC CAVERNS. This land our home sets on was once part of 80 acres that went with the original purchase of the cave. In 1958 we moved into a small 3-room house directly above the cave entrance. We could look out our bedroom window directly down into the entrance of the cave. We often woke early in the morning to tourist wanting a tour hours before the park was open

The road to the park came from the south. Thus the north boundary of the caves eighty acres had little, or no significant value. It was a fortress of brush, thorn trees, rusty cans, broken glass, many rocks, and more brush. Snakes too. It was a dumping ground for who knows what, and by who all.

side note (For added reading enjoyment, read about the First Jeep Tour of Fantastic Caverns when a Jeep was driven down these stairs)

We had been living in this little house for a couple of years when on a cold winter night I would first explore the north boundary where our house stands today. I think it must have been the winter of 1960/61. It was cold, bitter cold. Well below zero with a light blanket of fresh snow. The moon was full, no clouds, it was like daylight with sun shades on. In short, it was a beautiful winter night. In the early 50s we had lived in South Dakota and I was used to the cold. I felt like taking a walk to clear my head of many thoughts before bed, no matter that it was past midnight, and ever so cold. The family was wrapped in their warm blankets, and I had just stoked the wood stove. Looking out the window, I had a lot on my mind. I debated bed, or walk.

My mind was made up quick with the raspy `Kaawww' of a Hoot Owl, followed with the sound of frightened Banta chickens fleeing their roost in the walnut tree outside our door. One of our family of chickens was about to become a late night feast. This had become all to familiar lately with the hungry owls. I grabbed a flashlight and my 4-10. I was out the door in a flash, determined to get that pesky Owl that was picking off our beloved Banta chickens.

The owl flew north on wing. I flew north on foot, by way of the gravel road, past the old mansion house that stood between the road and the bluff. The moonlit, snow-covered landscape was an eerie sight as I headed on toward the old metal barn on the north edge of the bluff that overlooked the cave entrance. With the moon reflecting on the fresh snow, I didn't need the flashlight. The owl flew beyond the barn into the large Cedar trees and second growth timber that had discouraged any one from entering that area for many years. Wintertime made the going easier. I went on.

The beauty of the night made me forget the owl. I looked about, and headed along the north edge of the ravine that is referred to today as cave ruins. Picking my way through the underbrush I made my way northeast toward the bluff overlooking the Sac River. I marveled at the whiteness of the land with the deep shadows. The stillness was broken only by the crunch of my footsteps on the frozen turf. I stopped often, remaining very still. The quietness was deafening. It was a beauty that only I was experiencing. Civilization was nowhere. It was not even close in those days. No matter that we were only five miles NW of a large city. No lights of homes were to be seen anywhere. They hadn't been built yet. The valley across the Sac River was clean and white. You could see for four miles across to where old highway 13 was hid in a valley. No one, nothing, That night it was beauty. It was God.

I stood that night where the rail fence and the bench are today below the deck of our home. It is my favorite place for resting and meditation today. My body and sole cools, even on hot summer days when I think back to that night of forty and more years ago.

In this picture you can see the Sac River beyond the turkeys feeding in our back yard.

The Land, 1963

I once had an option to buy this cave and the 80 acres. Shortsighted bankers said the land was only worth a hundred dollars an acre, not $200. Three years after giving my option to the Trimble family of the Shepherd of the Hills Farm, and managing the cave, I felt it time we should have our own home for my young family. An agreement had been made that I would cut out a portion of the cave land for a home one day.

As manager of the Caverns, we had built on a shoe string and operated on daily receipts. Winters were especial tough. While the new owners were taking care of the advertising expenses, we were left to live on the daily receipts and the small profit generated each year. I wanted to see the business succeed and it was now on its way. I felt I no longer had a vested interest in the cave, so it was time to exercise my option, cut out the portion of land I wanted, and get on with our lives.

My first choice was along the South boundary overlooking the Sac River. This would mean cutting a road along the East boundary to the river bluff. If I thought about this North side, it was only in passing, as I wanted in the woods.

The day my mind was made up, was the day a business friend told me of his plan to expand his A&W Root Beer Stand on Kearney street. (old US-66) He would remove a house that he used as an office and warehouse. I couldn't afford to build a house, much less a 550 foot driveway. So I would buy his house for $500 and move it to the land north of the cave for its ease and less expense.

I went to the bank where the cave business had its account. Arrangements were made. It seemed strange that I could deal with a bank now as I made less money. It must have had something to do with the title of manager. I had been a truck driver earning better wages, but now I had a title. It sure had nothing to do with our financial condition. We were not any better off today than we were three years before. But all I wanted from the bank was seed money to get this project off the ground. Our A & W friend was anxious to get the house out and said I could start on the house right now and he would wait for my bank loan. Now I had to get a clear title on the land, find a house mover, and get with the program.

I settled on 150 x 300 foot lot. I thought this was more than any man needed and I could fit a 30 by 32 foot house onto a lot that size, even with out a plan. And there were no plans, not even county zoning.

The House, A cut below the rest

The story of this story and half house, as it set then where today Mc Donald's arches the land that once was the A & W on Kearney Street, must have been a story of need, more than logic. It was built between the surrender of Germany and Japan. There was a housing shortage and few building supplies. It was built of what ever could be found to piece together. Termites loved it and while I can only speculate, they must have moved out when the kitchen was used to grind the tons of onions that went on the Coney's and family of hamburgers when it was A&W. By today's codes, it would have been run down by a bulldozer and hauled to the landfill. To this I would say: shame on today's codes. But Instead, I was the one who almost destroyed it, ...with a chain saw.

My wife's father had bought several houses in his life time and sold them well worth the money on contract for deed to young families. I believe there must be at least 25 families today that got their start because of my father in law. He introduced me to a family of house movers. A short tempered father and two sons equally short tempered. The father was in the hospital at the time, so one son informed me that I would need to take off about 3 feet of roof and they would move it for five hundred dollars. Fair enough. I took the roof down to the top of the second story, removed two porches, and thought I was ready.

Wrong: I had failed to measure the width of the house correct, and it would not go out Melville road to our lot. I was told I had two choices; find another lot in the city, or cut the house in half. Failure to find another lot left me with chainsaw in hand.

The house measured 30 X 32. Kitchen, living room, in the first 15 feet and then two bed rooms and bath in the other 15 feet. Also two bedrooms upstairs.

With a deep breath, and an attitude `I know-what-I-am-doing', I begin my cut along the living room wall and kitchen. As I finished separating the two upstairs bedrooms, I noticed a gathering audience in the plaza across the street. A friend at the local Hardware store had the answer to what I was doing. He told the onlookers that the house was in an estate and two brothers couldn't decide how to settle it.

The loan at the bank had not came through yet and my A & W friend was getting nervous about the condition of his house. He said "if I would get him the money that day, ...well, ...just give me 400". It was an interesting day. I sawed a house in half, went to the bank and saved $100.

Back to the land

While all the attention was on sawing the house, I had to get the lot cleared. Close examination had showed several dump sites as well as old barb wire scattered around. I found a person with a bulldozer ready to work now, so I braved snakes and thorns and marked the trees that I wanted saved. I had staked the house to set near the county road because the land was more level. The house had no basement, and I hadn't planed on one. Besides, that would cost more. I just wanted to get it in and lived in. I thought we would sell it one day for a house more to our liking

The day of the dozer, I was working in town on the house and trying to run the cave business too. Checking back to see why the dozer was taking so long, I found the operator had paid no attention to my yellow ribbons and was heading for the bluff. He was drunk. If I had waited, he would have disappeared over the bluff’s edge, along with the trees he was pushing.

I looked at the mess, paid him and sent him on his way. I now understood why he was available. With discuss, I looked at what he had done. For the first time with the brush and most of the scrub oak gone, I could see the lay of the land. Right away, I envisioned the house setting near the bluff and over a walk out basement.

I called the house mover who said no problem, just give me another two hundred dollars. Now I had to find a sober dozer driver to cut out the basement. I found him in the person of one who I had worked with in the past when I drove truck. The arraignment was a good one. This is limestone land and he worked out nuggets almost the size of his dozer while digging the basement. Two of them rest today below the house and to the north. He also uncovered a fair weather spring that would haunt our basement for years to come.

A mobile home

That summer had been one of the driest in years. No rain for weeks. The grass was brown. It was a typical Ozark's summer when everything burns up. No one knows, or appreciates how I broke the drought that year. With the roof off and one half of the house already moved to our lot, it came the down pour of down pours. I was not prepared for it.

I desperately tried to stretch a cover over the part left in town. The wind almost blew me South. Then in a frantic state of mind, I drove like a crazy man to try and cover the other half that was already on our lot. I was too late. Plaster was falling and the sycamore timbers that made up the crude construction of the house were warping before my eyes. The rain hid my tears.

That next day, I can say there is nothing more tragic looking than a living room and kitchen separated from its hind quarters setting on moving timbers, over freshly rain soaked bulldozed ground, canvas flapping in the wind, doing little to cover the naked timbers of the roof. Then I look toward the road and here comes that hind quarters. No improvement. I wonder what l have done. But there is one person who has faith in me; an old Indian named Chief Evergreen Tree, standing by the house in the picture.

Evergreen Tree, an aged Pueblo Indian entertainer from the Wisconsin Dells was spending his first summer away from the Dells with us entertaining the tourist. He is sure I know what I am doing. So sure that he takes pictures. The only pictures of the house when it was at its worse. His faith didn't encourage me, but I knew I had to make the best of it.

I watched as the house movers set the timbers that supported the house onto cross timbers that would be the track leading over the future basement. Where the house timbers were let down on the track, a bar of soap was first placed between the timbers to ease the process of inching the house forward. I was not encouraged even as the brothers inched the two halves together along the massive timbers reaching over the hill side. A warp in the house was evident from the rain when the main level of the house came together. The upstairs bed rooms lacked about 5 inches oming together. Nothing to do but start putting it back together, and fill in the voids, ...hopefully.

The dozing into the hillside to make the basement, and the house mover were not in sync. They had it seteing too close to one side of the excavation and too far from the other corner. Fearing the disposition of the brothers, I wasn't going to say anything. They were satisfied but I could see I would have a lot of back filling to do later.

Rescue Carpenters

Earl Johnson and his family had lived in this neighborhood since the beginning of time. He built the sandstone rock house on the corner across from Schiller School that you pass on your way to the cave. Kenneth, his son built next door. Father and son had built most of the houses you see on both sides of the road on down the hill, and some homes by Ritter Mill Park. I first met Kenneth in high school when he would pick up Skippy who he would later marry. Skippy and her sister were good friends of my wife.

It was natural that when we moved into the neighborhood we would continue the friendship with Kenneth’s folks. They milked cows and we bought milk from them on a daily basis. Our daughter learned to drive fetching milk in that direction.

I had not asked help from Kenneth or Earl. They only built new homes. It was when they saw what a mess I was in that they said: "lets help Fred". I had another carpenter already on the job and in one day we could tell he wasn't right. Earl & Kenneth had to un-do most of what he had done. I don't know what I would have done had it not been for our friend and neighbor, the Johnson's. To the north of us and almost out of sight, another neighbor had just finished building a fine new home and he was rightly concerned about what I was doing. Johnson consoled him.

First, we had to cover the roof as best we could from the elements. Then lay a foundation to support the basement wall. Concrete Blocks are used on houses that have been moved because you have to build 'up' to the house, leaving openings in the foundation wall to pull the stringers out that are supporting the house. After the walls are up, the house mover will come back, let the house down on the foundation and pull the timbers out. Then you finish paying them.

With the Johnson's on the job, I found new hope that this would work after all. I removed damaged ceilings, old termite rot, and in general began constructive wrecking. I voiced hope of being in by Christmas, but Earl just laughed. "If you don't stop tearing things out, we never will get it put back together". I was removing pantry walls from the old kitchen and the wall between the kitchen and living room, as well as the floor that would lead down stairs.

The only way into the house at first was up a ladder through a hole in the living room that once held a floor furnace. Later we built a board ramp crossing the great mote that today is where the porch with a basement is. As we continued, there were changing of the minds and much counseling from the Johnson's. I enjoyed their humor and patience with me.

One evening, I was looking at the way the house was angled over this hole that had been dug for the basement. One side was against a rock ledge on the southwest and on the northwest, it set out about 12 feet. I looked at that twelve feet wondering where I would get enough fill dirt. That is when I decided we would build a seconded foundation to hold a porch, and under it, a hallway and door to the back side of the basement. The house would have a deck and covered porch reaching around more than half of it. We built a flat roof over the porch that would forever leak.

The unfinished product

I don’t remember much about moving in. It wasn't all finished but we had to stop somewhere. I had concentrated on the kitchen and living room for Ramona. Ramona loved to cook and I wanted her to have the best kitchen I could put together. It had double built in ovens and a kitchen island with electric range top. The island seemed to be before its time. Everyone thought that it was such a neat idea.

The bank had been loaning short term on the construction as we needed it. We cut it off at $7,200. This covered land, house moving, and all. (remember, this was 1963) The house appraised at twelve thousand five hundred and looked good with the new siding of marine plywood and batting strips, even setting on barren land that was scraped to fill in around the house. This would be the first time in our life that I realized we owned more than we owed.

Out of the hole, (the cave, ...that is)

The house and its large 12 x 36 foot deck overlooking the Sac River saw lots of happy times by our family and friends. I was making plans to leave the management of the caverns in another two years. The house and land would remain much as we had created it for another 16 years.

The basement had a drive in garage under the living room. The walkway under the covered porch was not finished. One room in the basement was finished into a play room. It had a dropped ceiling that became home to a friendly black snake that took care of any field mice, giving the cat a rest. I had a work bench in the garage where I occasionally worked on a Jeep or trailer. In rainy weather I would leave the garage door open enough to let the water from the wet weather spring run through. There was no doubt, much more had to be done. But it was home, in a most secluded and beautiful setting. It was home.

So what is my point?

If you are thinking of moving a house, then read on. A new highway or street project is often the reason perfectly good homes are sold to be moved, or scheduled for destruction. As an individual, it can be hard for you to compete with the big boys when it comes to bidding, but you can stick around and get the feeling of what this business is all about. Watch for a home to be moved to make way for a Church parking lot, or other small business expansions that don't attract the professionals. With patience you may find your house that is just right for you.

If it is a right size house, the bidding may seem high. An expensive house will not always bring the highest bid. Talk to a house mover, or someone who recently moved a house. I had my father-in-law to learn from. He was an early Habitat-for-Humanity sort of person. These were not the best houses, but driving by them today, you can see they were lovingly taken care of.

You can do it, but understand that you will have a house with many imperfections (mostly from moving it) but you can live in it or sell it. You will be taking on a major project so keep good records and watch the bottom line. Your in for an education.

There is zoning to contend with. Sad to say, so many houses have been destroyed that could have been starter homes for a deserving family all because of short sighted planning and zoning commissioners. Get together with house movers and ask questions of them. Decide who you would have move your house. Remember too, that many of these house movers are into buying, moving and selling on their own. Attend auctions and get the feel of what the houses are selling for and for what reason they sell cheep, or sell high.

If your in a County that has no zoning, then consider your neighbors. Will it improve the neighborhood? And DON'T GO OFF AND LEAVE IT UNFINISHED for any length of time. This is what invites zoning laws and Lord knows, we have enough of that today. Finish it with pride and enjoy. If you get it set in at a fraction of the cost of a new house, you are a winner.

I did buy another house and got it set in for about 40 cents on the dollar of what it appraised for. We made a rent house out of it. But our pride is where we still live today and can watch the turkeys out our living room window. Questions or comments, e-mail me: Fred Veregge

(As a postscript, the house was struck by lightning in Aug 02. It followed the galvanized pipe under the main kitchen floor and exploded out the icemaker in the freezer, cooking the meat and setting a fire in the wall. The wife was standing in the kitchen just above these water pipes and got enough of a jolt that she had to undergo therapy for close to a year. The fire and rescue were on the way to a cemetery where lighting had struck a funeral party and had to be turned back to respond to our fire. By the time they got here, the front of the house was engulfed. But this is only another chapter in this Growing a Home.)
Today: The deck was built when the house was moved in. The flower room added later. The basement is a complete apartment. In all, the house has two kitchens, two laundry rooms, two living rooms, 5 bed rooms, two full baths and a screened in front porch. And there are still the fox, dear, turkeys and nature.

For more stories of a CAVE, the OZARKS, of FRISCO RAILWAY PAPERS, of GENEALOGY, CLICK HERE.

Observation? Statement? Judgment? Comments? Anything?
E-MAIL ME!
Fred

A snow this big is rare enough that we take pictures of it.
The car port and flower room were added about 20 years ago. To get an idea what hasn't changed, the door to the right of the cedar tree is the same as the door that you saw above with Chief Evergreen Tree standing when the house was moved in.