Some House Thoughts -- and Ruminations on What the Tiny House Movement Has Become

 Since I've been feeling better lately, I've got to thinking again about doing a full renovation of our house one more time. It's been fifteen years (!) since the last one, and it's showing its age. Things have deteriorated partly because when I was ill, I could not take care of things properly even with help. It was all "too much."

Now I see how much needs to be done, starting with a new roof, and I've been calculating how much we can afford. Given the jump in the cost of lumber and the unavailability of other equipment and supplies, let alone finding an honest contractor, maybe not much. We'll see, we'll see. In a sense, we might be lucky because the house is largely adobe, but it will still need a lot of lumber, and I'll get to why in a bit. 

Meanwhile, I've thought quite a lot about what's become of the tiny house movement in the 20-some odd years since Jay Shafer began it with his Tumbleweed Tiny Homes. And what's become of Jay Shafer?

The first models I recall were "cute Victorian" and very small, all wood, and perhaps deliberately uncomfortable. They were made on trailers because they were supposed to be alternatives to travel trailers, meant to be towed behind a sturdy pickup, to take you anywhere and provide you with cool and unusual temporary housing unlike anything else then on the road. 

They were uncomfortable because sleeping was always in a loft, often under eaves that sloped sharply guaranteeing bumped heads, accessible by ladder only, and in early models with little or no ventilation ensuring that heat would collect in the loft making sleeping there impossible during the warm months. Later, ventilation and even air conditioning were integrated, but for many people, the loft sleeping areas were still uncomfortable.

Jay's ideas were considered brilliant and radical back in the day and they triggered many. many imitations and evolutions. One of Jay's ideas was that the tiny house was meant to be self-built (probably with friends, and only by necessity with professional help.) The result was limited in size because of regulations governing what could be towed on the highways without a permit. One was supposed to travel with one's tiny house to destinations of beauty, peace, and contemplation. There was something sort of Buddhist about the idea, meditative, liberating. Jay himself often came across as a Zen sprite. Meant to inspire.

Self-built tinys (Tiny Homes On Wheels-- THOWS) are still a thing, but not to the extent they once were, partly because it's difficult or impossible to get ready-made trailers to build on, and custom trailers are very expensive. The planning and work itself is difficult, well beyond the skill level of most do-it-yourselfers, and in most cases, the whole project is going to cost a LOT more than anticipated -- or than a decent used travel trailer that can be reno-ed into a tiny home on wheels.

The typical tiny home today is not cute, is not "Victorian," is nothing like Jay's original plans and ideas, is much large than the early tiny homes, is built by specialists, and costs a veritable fortune in order to create a slice of a contemporary high end house to haul with you when you go for a jaunt. And it seems most never move after their first giant journey from the factory, partly because they are too heavy and awkward to be taken on the road. Most cost in the $100,000+ - $200,000+ range and are permanently confined to "villages" and as accessory dwellings on private property. The whole idea Jay started with proved to be impractical for most of those who took up the idea and propagated the Movement.

Defenders like to say that though the cost is high per square foot, it's about the same as an Airstream, and the result is far sturdier and home-like. It is honestly not as transportable, however. A tiny home is meant to resemble a slice of an expensive contemporary suburban home, not an aluminum sausage, after all. And if you can get one built for about the cost of a new deluxe Airstream travel trailer, why not?

Many of those who have taken over the tiny home market are high-end builders who sell exclusively to well-off clients who, let's face it, are looking to show off and often to profit from the gullible followers of the Movement through AirBNB rentals.

They can pay $100,000 or more for their THOWs that never move because they can rent them for a couple of hundred or more per night to those who want to "experience" the Movement. It's a profitable business for some, not so much for others.

The point of building on a trailer was so the little houses could be towed around, but they were found to be so heavy and awkward in movement that after the first flush of enthusiasm, they largely stopped being towed, even though many were still built on trailers and these days RV certification is considered sine qua non for tiny homes. 

Jenna Spesard went on a "Tiny House Giant Journey" in her Tumbleweed tiny for years and ultimately gave it up. It was uncomfortable, impractical, expensive, and far more limiting than she had imagined. The Dream was one thing. The Reality was something else again. Nevertheless, she is still very active in documenting alternative lifestyles, including tiny home living, and has a reputation as a survivor.

As is, for he record, Kirsten Dirksen.

Bryce Langston likewise with his "Living Big in a Tiny House" series on YouTube is a long-time tiny house documentarian and advocate. He's documented an enormous number of tiny homes in Australia, New Zealand, British Columbia and the United States, always with enormous enthusiasm and interest, and he's documented some of his own builds including a couple of failed ones (a tiny he commissioned in the US that was apparently never finished and was abandoned when he and the builder disagreed over something, and an ambulance build that was never finished because -- apparently -- the vehicle kept breaking down.) Most of the tinys he documents are not moved once they are emplaced, and they are usually placed on land owned by a relative or the owners of the tiny, generally out in the country somewhere.  Very few are found in urban or suburban contexts. That's partly because of zoning and other regulations that disallow them for long-term location on private property or for long-term (sometimes even for temporary) residential use.

An exception to the common prohibition on tinys in an urban/suburban context is the relatively recent use of tinys to house the homeless. This is always difficult, always expensive, but it is showing up more and more in urban areas beset with a growing homeless population. It has been modestly successful in some places, in others, it's little more than a horror-show. 

Some of the worst examples I think are in Los Angeles where acres of concrete or asphalt paved parking lots are dotted with grim pre-fab mostly metal sheds that resemble nothing other than individual prison cells not meant to "house" anybody but just to store them away for a while -- out of sight, out of mind. 

They're horrible, and they should be shameful, but it's LA, and LA, as always, plays itself.

So what to make of Jay Shafer's impulse to build tiny houses back in the day and what it's become? I've always felt there was something ridiculous about it. It's re-inventing the wheel, self-indulgence too. On the other hand, initially it was charming, even for a time delightful, as this sprite, Jay Shafer, came up with sweet little houses that could be towed from place to place and could provide a slice of old-fashioned simple living (a key concept almost absent from the field today) for those on the road to adventure. It wasn't camping or RV-ing. It was compact cabining or even pioneering. 

Jay ran into problems with regulations almost immediately because his tinys didn't fit any known building concept or code at the time. There was no proper way to categorize what he was designing and building, so there was no proper way to permit them. Without proper permits, they couldn't be placed on land, and legally they couldn't be towed. They were in limbo. 

So ultimately Tumbleweed, the tiny home company he co-founded, settled on providing plans for self-builders and building a few tinys themselves and getting them certified as RVs, meeting RV standards and codes, but with understanding that once they are delivered, they are probably not going to be towed again.

Some builders and owners have ditched the THOW concept altogether because they never had any intention of traveling with their tiny. Instead they simply want to build and live in a small house or have a small house (casita in New Mexico) on their property for occasional guests or to rent out. Well, good luck!

In many parts of the country, it's not possible. A "dwelling unit" is required to be of minimum size (generally 600sq ft, but often more) and only one is permitted per property; accessory dwelling units smaller than the minimum are often not permitted at all. And tinys are almost never more than 350 sq ft, often much smaller. 

Where they are permitted (and more places are allowing them due to a critical housing shortage)  it's typically out in the country somewhere. And out in the country, it's kind of absurd to spend $100,000 or more for a tiny that may be no more than 300 sq ft, when an entire 1,200 sq ft or large mobile home can be purchased and emplaced for about the same cost. 

What would most people rather live in and why?

Of course Jay Shafer never envisioned the $100,000+ tiny home (or at least I hope he didn't.) And his point with tiny homes (simplicity!) has been largely lost.

And what's happened to Jay Shafer? From what I've read, he's essentially disappeared. Gone into hibernation mode. Not active on social media, disabled email, silent companies. And not for the first time.

From what I saw of him prior, he struck me as possibly bi-polar, and if that's the case, I can understand why he might go into a slow-down, quiet-down phase of life. But I also think what the tiny house Movement has become (a plaything for the rich; storage bins for the homeless) must be very disturbing to him. That's not what he intended. 

Much of the initial idealism has disappeared replaced by... showing off.

Our house is not tiny -- for us, it's big, one of the biggest houses we've ever lived in, so big a couple of rooms are closed off more or less permanently; it's old and creaky and needs renovation; hard to heat in winter, hard to cool in summer; leaky roof, leaky pipes, ancient electric (knob and tube in some places!) flooring needs replacing, and realistically, the whole kitchen, laundry room, and entrance hall (once an open porch) needs rebuilding, sewer lines need replacing, be nice to have a new bathroom. We have a couple of small buildings on the property that could be renovated into tinys, but I don't think we'll do that. At one time, I thought we might, but not now. 

What comes after the Tiny House Movement? Can it continue to evolve? I don't know. Right now, I don't know whether we'll be able to once again renovate our home, either. 

Right now, it's not at all clear what the future may -- or may not -- hold for us or anyone else.

Here's an interesting discussion that went on over a number of years regarding Jay Shafer and his work, including his $5000 tiny created in 2018:

https://tinyhousetalk.com/jay-shafers-designs-and-builds-a-5000-tiny-house/

Houses Again. This one in particular...

Some additional thoughts about this house. The photo is from the Google Street View taken sometime last year. The exterior of the house hasn't changed much at all in the nearly 100 years since it was built. The front door has been painted gray, but it appears to be the original oak plank door, 2" thick, very heavy. The carriage lights on either side of the front door were added when the house was renovated after my sister's husband's grandmother's estate sold it c. 1962.

The floor plan, which you can barely make out, is of the house in Scarsdale. The one built in Sacramento was nearly the same, but there were some slight differences.

The upper floor plan is the first floor. You entered into a large terra cotta tile floored entrance hall. To the left, in the Sacramento house but not the one in Scarsdale, was a powder room, very tiny but adequate for doing one's business. It took up a small portion of the fireplace recess in the floor plan. There was a coat closet next to it, also utilizing a bit of the fireplace recess.

Memory update: the powder room was the only part of the fireplace recess utilized in the entry hall. There were two coat closets, one on either side of the front door, built into the front wall. 

You went up a step into the main part of the house, specifically into the stair hall. From there you could turn to the right and go under the stairs into the butler's pantry, turn left into the living room, or go straight into the dining room, passing by the stair landing. There was also an entrance into the pantry from the stair landing.

The living room entrance was framed with a heavy fumed oak archway. Fumed oak is very dark. In the plan it looks like there is a step down into the living room, but in the house in California there was no step down. The room was approximately 27' x 16' not counting the bay window which probably added another three feet in length. The ceiling was 20' above the floor. There were three french doors leading to a long screened loggia. The fireplace was in a corner opposite the french doors, in a deep recess. On either side of the entry arch were built in bookcases, also fumed oak.  The room was heated with radiators which were built in to the walls, one under the window on the wall where the fireplace was, and two others between the french doors. Each radiator had a wrought iron grille.

There was a Sarouk rug filling most of the dark-stained oak floor. The draperies were heavy wine red velvet, and the ones at the bay window and near the fireplace were hung on wrought iron rods. A Steinway "3/4 grand" piano was in the corner beside the bay window.

I remember three double branch electric candle sconces and two single branch ones, all in wrought iron with gilded leaf decoration. With all of them on, the room was dimly lit. It looked quite medieval, even chapel-like.

Houses Again

This house in Scarsdale, NY, is the model for the house where my sister and her husband lived in Sacramento from 1956 until (about) 1962, when the house was sold after the death of my brother in law's grandmother who owned the place.

 

It's too bad there are no interior pictures of the house. It was really rather grand, especially the two story living room with a huge bay window at the far end.

There is at least one other version of this house in Greenwich, CT. It was listed for sale a few years ago, I believe at an asking price just under $3 million. It had been expanded and partially remodeled in a more contemporary style, but it still retained a number of original attributes.

The house in Scarsdale is Norman French style, though because the house in California had a red tile roof, I thought it was Spanish when I first saw it in 1957 on a visit with my mother from Southern California. Wrought iron lighting fixtures, some gilded, heavy oak woodwork, old gold wall coverings, oriental rugs, wine colored velvet draperies, a Steinway grand piano, I think I was stunned when I first stepped in the oak plank front door.

The house was built in 1923 by the general manager of a local department store. He was the grandfather of my sister's husband. He died in the late forties, I think, and the house was  inherited by his wife. Their son went on to manage department stores in Sacramento and Seattle, while their grandson was at boarding school. When he graduated, he moved in with his grandmother while he attended college. He married my sister while both were students. She moved into this house with him and they had three children before they moved out.

The house was purchased by a doctor who did some remodeling and updating and added a lot of what I thought were excessive French accessories like chandeliers and so forth. I toured the house while it was being renovated and I remember being aghast at some of the things that were done to it. On the other hand, it could have been worse.

My sister was not unhappy to leave it at all. She called it a monster. Way too big to care for by herself, especially with kids, and she was still going to college for her masters. She hired a housekeeper/nanny, but even so, she always felt overwhelmed by the place.

When they moved out, though, they moved to a new but even larger house. I think the stress of maintaining it was at least equal to that of the older house.

There are more stories I could tell about this house -- I have a lot of memories there -- but for now I just wanted to preserve the record from House Beautiful magazine, since I stumbled on it quite by accident today.

Happy New Year.

The Blumenschein House, Taos

Star Road and White Sun by Ernest L. Blumenschein c.1920, Albuquerque Museum 

Since I've been on this dwelling theme for a while, why not continue for a bit longer, eh?

I was back in Taos over the weekend to pick up Ms. Ché who'd finished her writers' conference, and we decided to stop at the Blumenschein House on our way out of town to compare and contrast it with the Couse House which we'd visited the prior weekend.

Blumenschein, together with Bert Phillips, started the process of making Taos into the place it is today when their famous Wagon Wheel broke a couple of dozen miles from town and Blumenschein won the toss to take it into the hamlet somewhere down below them to get it fixed. They had to wait, as one can imagine there in the middle of nowhere, and so they did.

While waiting, they became enchanted, so the story goes, and they spent the rest of the summer awestruck and delighted, painting up a storm, and pondering their own futures.

Phillips stayed in Taos the rest of his life. Having settled in, there's no other place he'd rather be. Blumenschein went back to Paris where Joseph Henry Sharp had told him and Bert about the enchantment to be found in Northern New Mexico, and one thing led, eventually, to another, and all of them wound up living and working in Taos at least part time, and Blumenschein and his wife Mary settled in themselves, purchasing Buck Dunton's place (or part of it) on Ledoux St, where they set up quarters of a sort and a studio in four ancient rooms said to have been a part of the village defenses against the Indians when time was.

I won't go into that history, but quite a few of the Spanish settlements in Tierra Adentro were consciously built as fortresses, and the village of Taos was no exception. The Indians were wild back in the day, particularly Kiowa, Comanche, Apache and Navajos.

The appropriate tangent at this point is to mention that there are three distinct "Taos"-es. There is the ancient Indian Pueblo at the foot of the Mountain; there is the village some three or four miles south; then there is Ranchos de Taos, several miles south of the village, where stands San Francisco de Asis mission church that's been painted by Georgia O'Keeffe dozens of times and by other painters endless numbers of times.  Side note: Dennis Hopper is buried in Ranchos de Taos, and his grave is a pilgrimage site for a diminishing number of aging Easy Riders.

Surrounding all of this is an amorphous outlying settlement area dotted with ranches and ranchettes and earthships and what have you where by far the largest number of Taoseños currently live scattered to the winds perhaps, but partaking in their own way the essence of that Sacred Placewhere they don't have to mix too much with the tourists.

At least it's not as bad as Sedona.

Anyway, none of the Taoses would be what they are today without Bluemschein and Phillips and the other members of the Taos Society of Artists and their numerous offshoots and successors and the many other influencers who have passed through or settled there since that fateful Wagon Wheel broke in the summer of 1898.

Blumenschein returned to Taos in the summertime for years, but he lived in Paris or New York, making money as a successful illustrator for magazines and books, until 1919 when he purchased "four rooms" from Buck Dunton, another member of the Taos Society, and settled in, or at least tried to. This was like camping out for the Blumenscheins and most of the other artists attracted by the Blumenscheins and others to Taos. The four rooms were built of mud and timbers, some of the structure apparently among the oldest still standing in the village, they had little heat, no electricity or indoor plumbing, and like everything else in Taos they were at the edge of Nowhere. It's hard to explain how difficult it was to get to Taos from anywhere else, and to get from Taos to anywhere else. This isolation was both a handicap and a blessing.

The house as it stands today is a rambling L shaped structure around a lush courtyard, in one corner of which is Buck Dunton's studio -- which he apparently kept even after all the other rooms on the property  had been purchased by the Blumenscheins. This part of the story is a little confusing to me. Apparently Buck bought part of the rambling structure from earlier residents, but most of the structure was owned by and lived in by long-time Hispanic residents who one by one were persuaded to vacate by Blumenschein's offers of cash money. At least that's how I interpret the story of how Ernest Blumenschein eventually acquired the entire property.

This is a pattern that repeats over and over again -- even now --throughout the fancier and more tourist oriented areas of New Mexico. It's a form of gentrification, pushing out the original settlers and descendants to make way for the shiny, sophisticated newcomers. "Sophisticated" is the key.

The Blumenscheins were nothing if not sophisticated, and yet their mud house on Ledoux Street is a curious amalgam of its primitive Hispanic roots and the high style that the Blumenscheins had acquired in Paris and New York. Curiously, there's almost no Native influence in the house at all, though apparently they employed Native servants as well as Hispanic ones (this was typical of the art colony.)

The Couse house shows lots of Native influence or at least artifacts, and Mabel's Place up the road from the Couse House was built by Native artisans from the Pueblo, and of course, Mabel was married to Tony Luhan (who had his own house on the property) who was born and raised (and had another wife and children) on the Pueblo.

There are a number of other Taos Society historic sites to explore, and eventually we may get to them, or not. I started my explorations of this sort many years ago at La Fonda de Taos where I stopped one evening to take in the D.H.Lawrence scandalous paintings. The ones there now are reproductions, but I saw the originals... and to be kind, I wasn't moved. But it started my journey to learn more about the artistic history of Taos.

It's a story of colonizers and colonization, one that has transformed some of New Mexico yet has left much of the rest of the state practically untouched.

On our way back from Taos this past Sunday we stopped off at the Santuario de Chimayó where a large group of East Indian pilgrims was taking all the Holy Dirt out of the Holy Dirt Pit and transporting it away in gallon containers. There seemed to be none left for the other pilgrims. We sat beside the abandoned crutches and Santo Niño and shook our heads in wonder and wiped the sweat from our brows as the heat and humidity of the day was surprisingly intense. We nodded to the statue of Father Roca in the courtyard. His generosity of spirit will live on....

I Lived Here

This is getting bizarre. I wasn't sure about the address. After all, I left this place when I was three or four years old, but some numbers came back to me, and when I plugged them in, up popped this duplex. Sure enough, it's where I lived with my mother and sister in 1951. Not sure when we moved in. Nor am I quite sure when we moved to the other side of the tracks* -- either 1951 or 52. I remember that in 1953 we moved to Los Angeles County. This duplex is in Santa Barbara County.

The exterior is almost exactly as I remember it. The colors are the same. The windows are different, the front doors are solid --they were multi-pane glass when I was a kid -- and the fence and overhead on the left side (the side we lived in) weren't there, but otherwise it's remarkably preserved.

The interior is a different matter. It's been so radically renovated that I barely recognize anything. It almost looks like it's been made into a four-plex rather than the duplex it had been, but I can't tell for sure, and the listing states a duplex with two two bedroom one bath units. The interior photos, however, are very confusing with bathrooms opening off living rooms and kitchens tucked into odd corners, nothing at all like the place I remember fairly well after all these years.

The trouble is there's another house down the street -- two bedroom, one bath single family home that strongly resembles this duplex -- where I think we lived before we moved to this place. Or possibly after. My memory is scrambled when it comes to these houses. I distinctly remember living in a duplex but the picture I have in my mind's eye is not this one -- although we definitely lived here. It's a duplex on another street and my memory of it is quite dreadful. It was tiny, stinky and dark. This one is quite light  especially in the morning for it faces east.

The house down the street is similar, but it is laid out differently. The bedrooms in that house, for example, are on the right side with a bathroom in between. There's a living room, dining room and kitchen on the left side. There's a fireplace in the living room. All of which I remember, and none of which are/were in this duplex. So I don't know what's going on. It's possible that we didn't live in the house down the street, but I stayed there during the day while my mother worked. But maybe not..

I don't know.

This is the house down the street I remember:

There was a big field behind it. Maybe we lived there briefly before moving to the duplex or maybe it was the other way around.

The confusion is part of the reason why I'm working on a mapping project as an artistic way to remember or forget. I've lived in so many places in my life, and honestly, I don't remember half of them, or if I do, it's just snapshots divorced from locations.

We'll see if another one turns up in a real estate listing.

*the tracks mostly aren't there any more, but like most California agricultural towns, the railroad was critically important to moving produce and people and for the development of the town and region.  In this case, the tracks which ran north and south divided the town in two. West of the tracks was Tigertown, very much a working class area of very modest homes and industrial/equipment plants. East of the tracks was something better, whiter, and much more at ease.  When we lived in the duplex above, we lived just west of the tracks -- close enough for me to hear the whistles and the clanging bells in the morning, but not quite close enough to see the engines and cars passing by.

Living in Tigertown didn't bother me, but then I was three, what did I know? Moving across the tracks was more of a culture shock than one might think for a white boy, but there you are. Certain assumptions were made by our new neighbors since we had come from "over there" and given the fact that my mother wasn't married, well, you can just imagine...

Again, though, it's another story for another time.

I Lived Here

This was my father's house in Iowa. It had been his father's, and for years in the 20s, 30s, and 40s it was used as a family "spare" house. Many members of my father's large family lived here for varying lengths of time until the late 40s when my father and his youngest sister movedin permanently.

The small window on the first floor is where the front door to the house and then to the upstairs apartment was. I'm not entirely sure why it was closed off. Now the main entrance to the house is on the side under the porch roof, where the downstairs apartment entrance was back in the day, but it makes getting to the stairs awkward as hell, as they are still where they were when my father lived there.



It was a very old house, or at least parts of it were. It started as a two room single story house perhaps as early as the 1840s. It was gradually added to in the 19th century, gaining a number of wings and a second story. Later, long after my father died and the house was sold in 1969, an extension was added  to the back of the kitchen, and even a two car garage was built beyond that. It appears to be quite a large house now, but I know it is not.

I lived there from the time I was born until my parents' divorce, essentially only 9 months, though I returned to Iowa in 1961 and 62 for a couple of months in the summer each year. The first summer I stayed in the upstairs apartment that had recently been vacated by the death of my father's youngest sister who had lived there for decades. At the time, the house was divided into two apartments. I don't know when that happened, but it had to have been no later than about 1930, as I've found many records showing various members of my father's family living in the separate units upstairs and downstairs.

The second summer, I stayed at a hotel down the street because my father had rented out the upstairs apartment.

The house looks large, but it's not. The rooms are tiny. Unfortunately, the interior pictures in the listing are very poor, and it is difficult to gain any sense of orientation and size of the rooms. When I first saw them, I couldn't figure out where in the house most of the pictures were taken. After studying them a little while, however, some of the pictures of the interior began to make sense.

For example: this is a picture of what had been my sister's downstairs bedroom when I was and infant and was transformed into a cramped living room when I visited as a pre-teen.

The room is about 10' X 11' in size. The three panel window was added by my father to please my mother. It's somewhat similar to the front window of the house where my mother grew up in California. 

The doorway on the right leads to the stair hall, but it was been closed off when the house was split into two. Apparently it was reopened when the house was renovated and turned back into a single family residence several years after my father died.

This picture is of what was the living room when I was an infant and the dining room when I was a pre-teen.

The room is about 10' X 12' or a little smaller. The windows were added by my father to please my mother. The first time she saw this house, she complained that it was dark and musty. There was so little light and air that she said she was depressed and she wouldn't live there. Not only that, the rooms were so small and so badly arranged, it was a nightmare just to get around. For example, the door to the right of the windows leads to a small entrance hall, and the door to the right of that leads to the room that had been a living room or a bedroom. 

This is a similar view taken by my sister shortly before my birth. 

Parental units having a gimlet before dinner? Who knows?

This is a downstairs bedroom. It's about 8' X  10'. It was my parents' room when I was an infant, my father's alone after they divorced. Behind the camera is a bathroom. 

There may be another bedroom beyond the bathroom. I have vague memories of another room there, entered from the kitchen(?) that was used for storage. And then when I went back to the house after my father died, I seem to recall that there was a bed in there together with other bedroom furnishings, and I thought my father had been sleepng in there during his final illness. But my memories of it are not clear.

This may be a picture of that room:

It may also be a room in another house altogether.

This is the west side of the house

The upper window in the projecting bay was originally one of those Gothic windows like you see in the well-known Grant Wood painting of an Iowa couple. 

You wouldn't know it from the outside of the house, of course, and as far as I can tell from the pictures in the listing, you can't see the Gothic arch from the inside of the house anymore either, but when I stayed in the upstairs apartment in the early 60s, indeed, the interior window frame was still in place, and its resemblance to the window in Grant Wood's painting was plain to see. The woman in the painting rather resembles my Aunt Alice too, but that's another story for another time. 

I saw the painting at the Art Institute in Chicago that summer, and I was quite taken with Wood's technique. I remember being surprised at how large the painting was, as I had only seen illustrations in books previously, and I assumed it was fairly small. I mentioned to my father that the window was similar to the one upstairs in his own house, and he said that the house -- or that part of the house -- was probably built at about the same time, which I would much later learn was the 1880s. 

An this is the north side as it is now

The extension on the back of the house is much larger now than it was when my father lived there. The kitchen and a breakfast room area had been added to the first floor of the house -- I'd guess in the 1930s -- but it only extended as far as the double doors onto the deck in the picture above. There were no double doors or deck at that time; there was only a window on that side and a back door at the rear of the house onto a utility porch with steps out to the back yard. 

There's now a double garage beyond the rear extension. There was no garage when my father lived there. He parked on the street. 

The house is listed for sale at a discount price. Not sure why the price is so low except that in this neighborhood, many houses sell for much less. This part of Iowa is not very prosperous, and nearly all the houses on this street -- houses which had once belonged to my grandfather -- are old and dilapidated. This house is actually in better shape than many of the others nearby, but the last time I saw it in person in the early 80s, it was a wreck, painted dark brown and very broody looking. Its current yellow-ness is cheery by comparison.

Again, this is a memory exercise. Finding other houses I've lived in now listed for sale is something of a quest because I've got to remember addresses as well. This one was relatively easy. Others will prove more of a challenge.

I Lived Here

Nearly 60 years ago, I lived in this modest house in a fancy neighborhood in California.

The front and driveway and garage haven't changed a whole lot, though they aren't quite the same. The house is now gray with brick porch and trim; it was white when I lived there, and the brick was painted gray. There were no planters in front, nor were there any round stepping stones.

The house was built in 1939. There were two bedrooms, one bath, an enclosed back porch leading to a knotty-pine paneled family room, a kitchen, laundry room, dining room and living room with fireplace when I lived there. Since the early 1960s, the house has undergone an extensive remodeling. The family room added onto the back of the house in (probably) the early 1950s was demolished and a new much larger addition was built. Two more bedrooms and baths, a kitchenette and a smallish living room were added, pretty clearly intended as another unit. The screened patio attached to the garage was also demolished to make room for the larger addition. The many fruit trees in the back must have been uprooted. I recall apricot, peach, plum, pear, orange and lemon trees.

These pictures are from a recent real estate listing for this house. The front part (the original house) hasn't changed much since I lived there, except for the kitchen and laundry room, and essentially is the same as when it was built in 1939.

The living and dining rooms from the front entrance. The rooms were painted off white, not HGTV gray-green, when we lived there; the fireplace did not have an insert, there were no can lights in the ceiling and there was a rather forlorn crystal chandelier in the dining room. Otherwise, even the furniture arrangement is practically the same as when I lived there. Is this the current owner's furnishings or has the house been staged for sale? I don't know. May be a bit of both.

Another view of the living room showing the little entrance area. The stained glass octagonal window was clear glass, otherwise, the same as when I lived there. We had a pair of wingback chairs by the windows, the usual table and lamp in between. The lower part of the windows had muslin café curtains.

In the dining room as mentioned, there was a crystal chandelier, and the furnishings were arranged pretty much as you see here. Instead of a credenza we had an "Early American" hutch, and the table and chairs were sort of "Shaker" -- very simple (round) table with four ladder-back, rush-seat, chairs. In the living room on the far wall by the entrance was a desk and bookshelf.

The glass door led to what was called "A Room" -- what had been a back porch when the house was built. It had been enclosed some time in the 1950s, and served as a passage to the added on family room beyond. I recall it flooded a couple of times, but I don't remember whether there was a roof leak or water seeped from below. There was a window in "A Room" so there was some natural light in the dining room. What seems to have happened since then is that the addition of two bedrooms and baths plus other rooms to make what appears to be an apartment has cut off any natural light to the dining room.

From this angle, you can see a bit of the kitchen, which I will not detail because it's changed so much, it's almost unrecognizable in current pictures. When I lived in this house, the kitchen was straight out of 1939, very simple and plain. We had a portable dishwasher, though, so there was that.

This was the front bedroom. Although it's set up as an office here, it's not hard to see how it would have been as a bedroom.

A view toward the hallway. Essentially nothing's changed except the paint color. The shelves in the hallway are original.

Except for new fixtures, flooring, and window, the bathroom is pretty much the same. Small, utilitarian, the way they were back then.

The second bedroom. Identical arrangement when I lived there. Another view below:

Could be my room spiffed up somewhat after nearly 60 years.

The rest of the pictures in the listing are of the addition and the remnants of the backyard, so I won't post any. They evoke no memories because when I lived there, the back of the house was completely different.

I like most of what's been done to the place -- except for the addition -- and I wouldn't mind living there again. It evoked other houses where I'd lived, particularly a cozy place from about the same era in West Covina,  and another house in Los Angeles County that had similar qualities though it was built in 1954 (based on plans from the 1930s, I'm sure).

Every now and then, I check to see if former places I've lived are for sale to see if I can snag some images of what they're like now. Houses always evoke strong memories for me, and as my memory deteriorates (another topic for another time) it's more and more important for me to retain as much memory as I can. This particular post is an exercise in memory. Not just of the house but of the neighborhood, my schools, friends, activities and so forth.

I've started working on an art series I call "The Mapping Project" which is a series of graphic interpretations of 20 places I've lived over the years. It's still percolating in my mind, though I've done some preliminary sketches. I hope I can complete it. It will be mostly abstract, but here and there, some elements may be nearly photographic.

We didn't live in this house very long -- 1960-62, perhaps, though we may have moved in late 1961 -- but it made a strong impression on me and there were some... interesting... events associated with it (including a fire, but we'll deal with that another time). The house is listed for sale at a rather breathtaking $589,000 with a pending offer. It's not by any means the most expensive in the neighborhood, but it's up there. Housing price inflation in parts of California is insane.

On Returning to Sacramento for the First Time in Almost Six Years

What an adventure.

Strange as could be, though.

Both Ms. Ché and I have deep roots in Sacramento -- she was born there, I became a resident when I  was 10 or 11.

After being away for so long, though, much was still familiar, some was not. And one thing we both said was "this is not 'home'". And it isn't. It's a very important place in our lives, but it's not "home."

Sitting outside  of Gunther's having ice cream on an extraordinarily beautiful day

we thought that if we did live there, we'd have compensations.

Gunther's is an iconic neighborhood ice cream place that's been in Curtis Park for decades and decades. It's always been popular, but it seems to have become a fashion destination for the whole city in recent times.

We lived a few blocks south in this house

Small by today's standards, it was considered more than adequate when it was built in 1940. Two bedrooms, one bath, a living room with fireplace, dining room, kitchen, laundry room and hall, that was it. There is a porch behind the overgrown shrubs in front, and a two car detached garage at the rear of the lot. We lived there for over twenty years, and truthfully it was a very warm and welcoming home for us at the time. When we checked it out this time, it hadn't changed much since we moved. It looks like there have been a few interior renovations (kitchen at least) and central air conditioning has been added, but that's about it.

Across the street, this place still commanded the block.

I'm sure it's not the biggest house in the neighborhood, but it's close to it. Dorothy lived there as a widow with her two standard poodles until she died in the mid '90s. There was a big sale of her things and then the house was sold to a doctor and his boyfriend (I think they got married as soon as same sex marriage was legalized in California.) It's a beautiful house, no doubt about it, and like most of the others in the neighborhood, it's been largely preserved intact through the years. Occasional redecoration and infrequent kitchen and bath renovation are about all that happens to most of these places.

Nearby, one of Ms. Ché's work colleagues lived here:

This house had quite a history.  One day in the late '90's the housekeeper found the owner shot dead in a pool of blood in front of the fireplace. A few things of value had been taken from the house. At first it was assumed that a burglar had broken into the house and killed the owner before absconding with whatever it was that was stolen. 

However, soon enough, suspicion fell on the 16 year old boy the owner had taken in some weeks prior. Exactly what was going on with the two has never been entirely clear, but the boy was found in possession of some of the man's things at his grandmother's house not far away, and shortly he confessed to the murder, saying he had killed the man because he was being molested by him. Whether it was true or not could not be determined, but if I recall correctly, the boy was not tried as an adult and I believe was released from juvenile custody when he was 21. 

This is where my sister lived from 1956 to (about) 1963.

It was built by her then-husband's grandparents in 1924 from plans they apparently got from House Beautiful magazine. I know of at least two other examples built from this house  plan, one in upstate New York (I believe in Scarsdale) and one in Connecticut (Greenwich?). 

Until about 1961, my sister's then-husband's widowed grandmother lived in the house with my sister and her then two children. Though the house is large, it was becoming cramped and crowded what with all the children and their things as well as three adults, two of whom needed special care. My sister's then-husband was legally blind and his grandmother was in deteriorating health. 

Eventually, Grannyma went to live with her daughter in the Bay Area. As it happened, she outlived her daughter and died in a care home. The house (and another one she owned at Lake Tahoe) was put up for sale, and as I recall the Sacramento house was purchased by a doctor whose fancy house a few blocks away had become somewhat notorious for his over the top French decorating scheme. 

The houses are somewhat similar, though I believe the one above was built in 1928 or 29 and is actually smaller than the one he purchased from Grannyma's estate.

The house where my sister and her then husband and children lived with Grannyma was in remarkably original condition when they lived there; everything was from the '20's except for the kitchen which had been modernized after WWII with a six burner electric range, a built in dishwasher and an enormous built in refrigerator -- which didn't work and was supplemented by a newer, normal sized fridge on the service porch. I thought of the house as Spanish revival -- due to its tile roof -- but it was actually Norman French revival, and when the doctor bought it, he went whole hog with a rustic French theme, painting much of the interior white including some of the heavy oak woodwork, and adding crystal chandeliers in practically every room. 

We went downtown while we were visiting Sacramento last week, and we walked around some of our old haunts. Surprisingly little had changed. Except for traffic -- which was horrendous. Well, it was horrendous everywhere we went in California. I can't believe it was this bad before we left, yet I could be misremembering, and I've been spoiled by the relative lack of traffic in New Mexico.

McCormick & Schmick's is now Claim Jumpers -- which is kind of sad as McCormick's was one of our favorites in Sacramento, San Francisco and Seattle.  We tried Claim Jumpers. It was... adequate though it seemed to take forever for us to be served our main course, and by the time we got the plates, some of the food was tepid. 

The space where we had our theatre is now a (ahem) talent agency. On the other hand, the space also  hosts an art exhibit area  with large windows on the sidewalk. There was an angel-figure in the window that we found quite charming. 

Homeless wanderers were everywhere in Downtown Sacramento, many more than we remember when we lived and worked there. I asked a friend what if anything was being done about homelessness, and he said that the problem of homelessness was national, and until something is done about it nationally nothing can be done about it in Sacramento. I told him that was bullshit. But apparently, even some of Sacramento's most influential "progressives" believe it.

We only stayed two days and spent four days driving to and from Sacramento. Traffic on Highway 99 through the Sacramento/San Joaquin Valley was sometimes terrifying. Drivers didn't think twice about going 90 miles an hour bumper to bumper, weaving in and out of slower traffic, and causing wrecks and near-wrecks all along the way. The Highway Patrol seemed only interested in stopping truckers and cleaning up after wrecks. 

The weather was surprisingly sunny and cool. The temperature never rose above about 75° in Sacramento, and it was barely above 90° in parts of the Mojave Desert. 

Unfortunately the car had an unanticipated problem on the return trip. The Check Engine light went on just after we crossed into New Mexico from Arizona. As soon as we could we stopped to try to figure out what was going on. Turns out the crank case was bone dry. No oil. We'd had the car serviced including oil change only a month or so before, and as far as we know there are no leaks, so the absence of oil in the crankcase was a puzzlement. I suspect the oil was never replaced or never fully replaced when the oil was changed in April.

I put oil in the car, and it seemed to be fine for the rest of the way home (about 160 miles). It's going back to the dealer where the service was performed to figure out what happened.

It was a decidedly quick and focused trip to start the process of clearing out our long-held storage unit. When we moved, we didn't have time to sort everything and get rid of things we didn't need, so we just packed the leftovers into a storage unit and said we'd deal with it later. It's been almost six years, and this is the first time we've been back. We loaded the car with things we had forgotten or thought were long gone: family photos, Ms Ché's mother's rolling pin, a few books and so forth. The rolling pin was especially important because Ms Ché was certain it had gone to Goodwill or the dump with other excess stuff we got rid of before we moved. She'd written a story about it and the memories she had of her mother making donuts when the thunder roared, and how important that rolling pin was to her memories of her mother. When she found it in the storage unit, she cried. It was almost overwhelming. So it was with a number of other items we brought back with us.

There is perhaps one small truckload of stuff remaining in storage, some pieces of furniture, boxes of photos and books, a mattress and springs and bed frame, a few other things, but we've reduced the accumulation by about half, and one more trip to Sacramento is being contemplated for October. And then? Who knows.

Ms. Ché leaves on Sunday for three weeks at Naropa in Boulder, CO, where she'll be studying with the "Jack Kerouac School of Disembodied Poetics." I told her I hoped the surviving Beats, like Allen Ginsberg, Gary Snyder and such -- I think Ferlinghetti is still alive too -- would show up just because. And I've been re-reading the original scroll version of "On the Road" to get myself in the right frame of mind for her departure. It's been interesting, too, because Kerouac trod many of the same paths we have, including mad dashing up and down the Sacramento/San Joaquin Valley back in the day. I think there must be a psychic link there.

-x----------------------------------------

Of course Allen Ginsberg (1926-1997) died some years back, but in my mind, he lives forever. 

Houses Again

This is the sort of-somewhat Mid Century Modern house in suburban Sacramento that I grew up in. Well, "grew up..." Maybe it's a "coming of age" story. Maybe not.

My mother bought the house in 1962 when I was 13 and I moved out in 1968 when I was 19. I moved back in 1973 (with Ms Ché) when my mother went to work in Stockton, and moved out again in 1975 when Ms Ché and I moved to San Francisco.

The house looked a lot like this when my mother bought it (for something like $17,500).

It looks like this now:

In between time, I painted the exterior avocado green. I planted the Japanese maple trees in the front yard. Most of the shrubbery, though, was there when we moved in. The people who bought the house from my mother in 1985 painted it white and it's been white ever since. They also made some slight landscaping adjustments and replaced the garage and entry doors. Other than that, it's pretty much the same as when I lived there. As far as I know, the address board I made in 9th grade shop class is still over the garage door.

The house had three bedrooms and two baths, built in electric range and oven in the kitchen, hardwood floors in the main rooms, a used brick fireplace in the living room as well as a wall of floor to ceiling windows with a sliding glass door to the backyard, but not much else. It was plain to the point of Spartan. There is just over 1250 square feet of living area.

The house was built in 1957 with a vaguely "Japanese" exterior, but there were dozens of other houses with the same floor plan in the neighborhood, and there were three exterior designs to choose from: contemporary, Japanese, or farmhouse. The interiors were all the same; the exteriors were actually more similar than not.

Every once in a while, one of these houses goes up for sale, generally listing between $270,000 and $300,000, and so far, none of the ones I've seen listed has undergone a gut renovation. In fact, most have had only normal repairs and replacement updates. Floors and appliances have been replaced in the kitchens, maybe a built in dishwasher has been added and the original sink replaced. Sometimes the kitchen cabinets and countertops have been replaced along with the appliances, but just as often, the original cabinetry remains. Bathrooms have had vanities installed and perhaps bigger mirrors and better lighting, Central air conditioning has probably been installed. The original aluminum windows have likely been changed out for vinyl. Roofs have been replaced. Decor has changed a bit from the 1950s. But otherwise the houses with this floor plan that I've seen listed were very similar to the one I grew up in.

This kitchen, for example, is almost exactly the same as the one in our house -- but for the newer appliances and the lighter stain or wash on the cabinets.



Even the countertop appears to be the same as in our house or very similar to it. Ours was this pattern Formica (Skylark):

And about that countertop, though installed in 1957, it featured something that's become ubiquitous on the home remodeling shows: a breakfast bar.

Though it doesn't show very well in this picture, the "breakfast bar" was about a 12" extension of the counter with an 8" overhang.

Though there are no barstools in the picture, we had two rattan and wrought iron ones (very popular back in the day) and from time to time we would sit at the counter having... ta da... breakfast. Note, there are no pendant lights over the counter-bar. There wouldn't have been in those days!

The cabinets were oak veneered plywood and had a sort of butternut finish. In this house, it looks like the finish was stripped and a pale yellow wash or bleach was applied. They're not painted. But they are the same cabinets. The hardware is hammered copper and is original. The tile pattern flooring appears to be vinyl and would have replaced stone pattern linoleum -- yes, real linoleum which was still widely available and very popular back then.

The problem we found with this linoleum was that the finish wore off rather quickly. We replaced the linoleum with vinyl asbestos tiles within a few years of moving in. Also a note for those who have pets and would like to have real linoleum floors today: think about it long and hard. Pet urine will destroy the linoleum surface in a twinkling. It cannot be restored. Word to the wise. Pet urine on hardwood floors can be even more destructive though repairs are possible.

The light fixtures don't have the original "space-the-final-frontier" globes, and just like us, the householder has replaced them with plain white spheres. I noted that some houses listed for sale had the original light globes, which I'm sure delighted Mid-Century fans and probably disgusted HGTV fans. The whole kitchen would throw them into a tizzy of horror and disgust. Sixty year old Formica?! Ewww! Must have granite! Marble! Quartz! What is that sink? Must have farmhouse apron sink! And that built in range and oven must date from the '70s! (Can you imagine what they'd think of the original appliances from the 1950s??) Who could stand to use them? They must be gross if they work at all. And electric???! Horrors! Rip it out and put in a Wolf or one of the other high end "dream" free-standing gas range. Those cabinets are soooooo dated. Rip them out too. Subway tile and open shelves are much better above the counter, and those lower cabinets are soooo ugly! How could any body live that way! Need recessed lighting, crown molding, and PENDANTS!!! over the breakfast bar! Stat!

Then the HGTV fan realizes the kitchen is really tiny, barely 10'x10' and there's no room for an island. How can you cook in it! Rip it out to the studs and incorporate the adjacent space (originally called a "family room" but it's only 10'x10' too) to make something at least potentially...something!

Here's a view of the kitchen and "family room" from another angle:

Yes, those false beams were in our house too. There's a built in dishwasher in the picture which would have been added later -  whenever the rest of the appliances would have been replaced. Our range and oven went out in the '70s.  We had a portable dishwasher. The picture makes the kitchen and "family room" look much larger than they are. No, I recall they were very cramped especially when we had parties.

Rip it all out right away! You have to! Can't live like this! [Per HGTV, This Old House, etc.]

The problem is there's no place to expand these rooms without taking space from others. Beyond the double window in the "family room" is a side yard that's barely 6' wide if that. Out the door on the right is the garage. Some homeowners expanded the "family room" into the garage space by six feet or so, but that's about as far as you could go without making the garage too small to accommodate autos. 

There's a laundry area in the garage on the kitchen side of the door in the picture. It was interesting. The electric water heater was on family room side of the door. On the kitchen side, there was just enough space for a washer and dryer, but nothing else. There was no vent for the dryer if you had one (but there was a 240v plug to plug one in on the assumption you'd get one.) The dryer location was on the door side of the space rather than the exterior wall, so a vent had to be installed by the washer, and a vent hose had to be run behind the washer. Once that was done, the dryer vented into an alcove by the front door. Not exactly best practice, I would think.

On the other side of the house was the living room. The picture of this living room is remarkably similar to our own:

The wall by the fireplace wasn't paneled in our house and the far wall in the dining area featured various wall papers over the years. It also had a high capacity room air conditioner punched through the wall high up. 

Sacramento is notorious for hot summers ("But it's a dry heat!" Feh.). Temperatures above 110° are not unusual. Some people got by in those days with swamp coolers, but when the temps were above about 104° they didn't do much of anything; likewise when humidity was above about 25% they ceased to have much effect on temps.  So for about half the summer, the swamp cooler would simply blow hot, wet air around... 

We got a room air conditioner (from Sears, I believe) for our previous (rental) house -- which we left there -- and got a much larger one for this house. A handyman installed it together with the appropriate 220v electric connection. 

Well, it cooled the living room, "family room" and kitchen reasonably well, but it could not cool the bedrooms. Eventually we got another window air conditioner for the master bedroom, but the other two bedrooms had to make do with fans. I remember being unable to sleep some summer nights because of the heat. Often, however, by early morning a sea breeze would come in from the Bay Area and cool outside temperatures down to tolerable levels. Of course  that could cause problems for the air conditioners. They would ice up if outside temps fell too low and would cease working. It could be a constant struggle to balance outside heat and inside cooling. Over time, most locals shifted to central air conditioning -- which was very expensive to install and operate in those days and I imagine still is -- but we never did. In fact, though I've lived in many different houses in lots of warm climates, I've never lived in one with central air conditioning. Hm. How about that? [It can get warm in the summertime where we are now in New Mexico, sometimes over 100°, but we make do with a couple of portable air conditioners and one window unit.]