First House

Stumbled on the sale papers for our first house the other day; 1097 B Street, Ashland Oregon.  The house was at the corner of Mountain and B Streets. This small lot was bordered on the other two sides by the county garage and the tracks. We think it was a converted ticket office for the train. We paid $7,000 for the house/lot. If we had financed the purchase it would have been $35/month.

The sheet says rewired 5 years ago. The wiring was two bare wires on insulators running the length of the attic. From these there were drops to 3 of the 5 rooms. During upgrading, we found exterior sides to the living room walls at he kitchen/bath and the bedrooms...the living room, 10 X 20 in the middle of the house, was probably the original structure. When we bought it, there was less than 700 sq ft. of living space. A single wall heater provided heat.

There were two bedrooms, each 10 X 10. No closets. The bath and kitchen were 10 X 13. The touted 20 X 12 workshop was merely a roof over gravel, which we enclosed and eventually made into a bedroom with a nice brick hearth and Franklin stove.

The trains ran right behind the house and we learned the different engineers by the way they blew the horn for the crossing. Early on, we noticed that on a regular basis, hippy types would gather at the crossing at regular intervals with food and blankets - the train would not stop, but would slow way down and the folks would jump aboard the open boxcars. We learned that this was a way to ride the train over the pass into California, presumably with the blessing of one of the engineers.

We remodeled all but the bedrooms including new ceilings, Then put up a two car garage between us and the train. It was about this time that we decided we wanted to get into sailing, put the house up for rent and headed east.

At the very time we decided to buy a brand new sailboat (Bristol 27), the renters decided to buy the house and we agreed on $14,000, just enough to pay for our factory new sailboat. 

 

The last time we visited friends out that way, the house had been torn down (or fell down) and the corner was now part of the county garage. 

PS - The house was a rectangle and if the bedrooms were 10 x 10 (and I think they were) the other rooms would have had to follow with 10 foot sides. Not sure how the sheet arrived at the 10 x 18 or 9 x 13 figures.