House of Hardman, A great old house for sale

March 2015

Notes on 3180 Riverside Drive, Wellsville, NY 14895, Part III of III

Remembering the house as we look to sell it.

STORY JAR 

For a period of years, I wrote a column for the Cuba Patriot. These stories happened on Riverside Drive.

The Sewing Room

WELLSILLE:   We knew some of the history of our house from people who studied Wellsville’s past and from the evidence behind the plaster. We think that William Middaugh built the house and planted our towering pines and an apple orchard on the land that was his farm. The first kitchen was a separate building but the current one became a part of the house after machine made nails were about.   

            The fireplaces were replaced with a monstrous, coal furnace and radiators in 1912 about twenty years before Leonard Jones enclosed the porch and planted his hole-in-one tree. Most recently, we ripped the whole thing apart in 1989/90 after our time in Malaysia. 

            We didn’t know about specific rooms but liked combining facts with stories so guessed that one room was used as an examination room by the country doctor who once lived and worked here.

Placed between a large room with an entrance from the porch and a small bathroom that was clearly added later, this room and its closet seemed a likely examination room. For us, it would become a sewing room.

            We ripped out the exterior walls to remove one window and replace another while adding wiring, a heating system and insulation.The interior walls needed some finishing touches so, while the kids were in school, joint compound and I kept company.

            One day after school, Em and Jay found me on the “don’t stand above this step” top of the ladder trying to sand near the ceiling. After saying hello, they went to the kitchen where Emilie hoped my Donna Reed persona had left brownies and I stretched for just one more swipe at a rough spot. They heard the rattle of the ladder, the scream, the thud.

            Jay ran into the room and, as soon as he saw me, started shouting, “Mom, you need 911. Mrs. Ewell told us all about calling 911. Where’s the phone? Mom? Can I call 911? Can I call, Mom? Mom!”

            While I was groaning and trying to think which limb should try to move first, Emilie told Jay to hush and tried to see if I still functioned in some way. My voice refused to make coherent sounds to match the ideas forming in my head. Jay ran for the phone. 

Well, I didn’t need 911 that day but I did need a taller, more stable addition to our stepladder collection so that we could reach the twelve-foot ceiling without clattering to the floor. 

That room seemed suited to wallpaper so we went searching for a deal on discontinued paper. At Black’s store in Olean, a yellow paper with a delicate pattern of pink, blue and white flowers seemed to sing that it was made for a sewing room. At a closeout store, odd lots of paper can get jumbled together but after a thorough search we were able to tote twelve matching rolls of that perfect paper to our car.

Later, Rick and I employed our regular wallpaper hanging system in the sewing room. He measured, then I cut and pasted. He hung, matched and swore while I rinsed the sponge, trashed the scraps and turned up the radio.

            All was going well until I opened the third or fourth roll and realized that there were two different patterns of wallpaper. All had the same batch number, label and colors, but there were two different designs. Now what?

            It actually worked out. There were nine rolls of one design and three of another.  We were able to hang the first design on three walls and the second on the fourth wall. You’d never notice if I didn’t tell you.

            Now, surrounded by yellow wallpaper, there is not only a sewing machine but also a computer. Hanging on the walls are tidbits of family history including old photos, Grandma Rollin’s button top shoes and assorted curiosities from Borneo. Taped inside the closet is Jay’s pledge, signed ten years ago, stating that he will not be angry with me for letting him quit piano lessons.

            I wonder what will be in this room in another fifty years.

A Mouse-Scented Room

WELLSVILLE: In an old, country house with a stone foundation, an occasional mouse will find its way inside and decide that life there is better. Such a mouse will take up residence in a wall and inconveniently die there leaving its legacy, a permeating aroma.

            I knew from experience that burning a candle in such a room would take away the odor so, when my sewing room started to smell like a dead mouse, I tried it. It didn’t work. Several candles burned, sputtered and died with no success.

            I decided to clean and wash everything in that room until the only smells left were Lysol and shine. I started by clearing the table, an area that had become a dumping ground for papers, clothing to be repaired and some small boxes. One box, I discovered, was not empty. 

            It was during our pet mouse population explosion. One mouse had died and Jay, about seven at the time, had confused my sewing room with a mausoleum. He had a dead friend waiting for spring burial in a cardboard box.

            Opening the box reduced my curiosity as totally as relocating the mouse to the shed cured the odor problem.

           

Apples, Holes and Branches

September 12, 2001

WELLSVILLE: Peter Salvatore came over to ask if we had noticed that the old apple tree had fallen. We hadn’t but Rick got the chain saw and went to work. It was sad to see the tree leave us.  There are memories in its branches and roots.

            The apple tree was one of a pair that the children had climbed when they were young. Our first house had only huge trees with no footholds for easy access so there wasn’t any tree climbing in that yard. Our second house was in Malaysia and there were palm trees, also not easy to climb. But, this house had the old apple trees with lower branches just a hop off the ground and other branches like steps waiting for young explorers. 

            When the house was empty, there were often legs hanging among the branches of that tree. Em would climb up to read and Jay to annoy her.

            We were told that William Middaugh had planted trees and built the house in the mid 1800’s. His apple orchard is now represented by a few trees in our backyard and that belonging to Rob and Tammy Christman. William died in 1881and left the house and all of the trees and land to his children. The farm eventually became our neighborhood and most of the trees were gone by the time we moved in. 

            Several years ago, when our cat, Aloysius died, Jay was heartbroken. I suggested that he go out to the apple tree and dig a hole to bury Aloysius while Em and I prepared a coffin. Jay asked how big a hole was needed and I told him to dig until he felt better.

            When Em and I started our procession to the apple tree, Jay’s legs were as deep in the hole as they had once been high in the tree. We could have buried several animals in that hole. It was an impressive feat considering the many intersecting roots of the tree and the small size of the boy. We held our ceremony and said farewell to Aloysius under the apple tree.

            Another significant event involved a ground hog hole. Ground hogs could dig faster, if not deeper, than Jay and their favorite spot was under that tree. Rick said that the dropping apples provided the ground hog’s version of home delivery so they were endlessly attracted to that spot.

            Rick worked to reduce our ground hog population because of the holes they left everywhere, holes that would break a running child’s leg. He would take a dead ground hogs, stuff it into the hole and shovel in the dirt only to find the hole open and active again in a few days. We lost count over time but at least a dozen ground hogs were buried in the one hole.

            The ground around the tree is lumpy still because Jay’s hole was never smoothly filled in and the ground hog hotel was opened so many times that there is a permanent dip in the soil. Two major branches fell this week and the main trunk is split one would hope that Mr. Middaugh would have been satisfied to know how long the orchard lasted. 

The Tractor and the Pillows, 

published 2001

WELLSVILLE: When we returned to the house in the early afternoon one Saturday, we found all the garage doors open as well as the house doors and all the windows. 

            In the kitchen, the stereo was blaring with window-shaking intensity but no children could be found. Jay was in eighth grade and had spent the night at Max’s house but should have gotten home before us.

The day of the tractor and the pillows.
Max Oglesbee, Em Hardman, Jay Hardman 

            Emilie was a senior but had gone to work at the nursing home that morning. She should have gotten back but her car wasn’t there yet.

            Someone must have opened everything and turned on the music and our money was on Jay. With hands over ears for protection, Rick approached the shaking stereo and put it out of its misery. We walked out to the back yard – easy to do with the door open- and listened.

            There was no sign of anything but a faint howling came from the pinewoods.  Was that also the putting of a tractor motor? Our tractor was missing and so was the cart.

            Could they be working in the woods? Hauling trash? What did they do to make that much trash? Thankfully all the trees were still standing. The howling turned into singing and then the tractor emerged from the woods. Max was driving and Jay was sitting in the cart.

            Their voices were shouting – singing, screaming – and they were so intent in their meandering drive and antics that they never noticed us until they were a few feet away. Their faces changed from joy to pure guilt.

            Other than the leaving the house unattended for who knew how long and blaring the stereo, something else naughty had been done.

            There was a little bit of yelling. You could like guess what was said.

             “What were you doing?”

            “This tractor isn’t a toy.”

            “Are you crazy?”

            They put the tractor away but seemed full of some kind of wild, unreasonable, ready-to-destroy, spring fever energy. I had just bought some new sofa pillows so gave them the old pillows to destroy. It seems reasonable. Little did I know.

            It started with a sort of pillow fight that seemed cute and harmless. By then Em had arrived and I took photos of the three of them with the pillows. Thinking that the world was safe for Jay, Max and others, I put away the things that had been acquired that morning. When I next looked out in the backyard, there was pillow fluff everywhere.

            Max was standing on a stump and had an ax over his head. He jumped off while swinging at the pillow remains that were nearly buried in the soft grass. I could just see someone putting the mattock into a skull or removing chunks of leg so I went out screaming, “Stop!”  a year’s worth of fear in one word.

Far right is Max and goofiest is Jay. I am behind the group. This
is the Wellsville High School Debate Team
in our kitchen with the window rescued from the
high school behind them.

            No, they didn’t think they could hurt themselves or each other. No, it didn’t seem dangerous. Yes, the tools looked like a perfectly reasonable way of dealing with old pillows. No, they hadn’t noticed that there was pillow fluff as far as the eye could see.

            I asked them to pick up the remains of the mutilated pillows that were around the yard. It was difficult. Max had hit a pillow so hard that it was jammed more than a foot down into the ground into a small round hole.

            Astounded, I asked, “Max, that must have been a lot of work to hammer a pillow into the ground so far. Why did you keep pounding on it?  Wasn’t it exhausting?”

            “Yeah,” he said, “now that you mention it, I’m pretty tired.”

            The pillow pieces took a long time to pick up but I didn’t dare leave those boys. They had gone from carousing to pummeling and I was afraid of what was next.

            It was a Jay and Max experience to remember and was, after all, far less stressful than getting a roll of paper towels out of the downstairs toilet.