By Jesse Halsey c1929
Mr. Hoover says that building a house, under modern
conditions in America, is as difficult as negotiating a foreign treaty. Having
gone into Russia and Poland on diplomatic errands during the way for the State
Department, I agree.
The inoculations each morning at the hospital made me more
miserable than ever, and work in the study became impossible. I don’t like
golf, so I bought some backlots at the topnotch prices of three years ago and,
after the morning visit to the hospital, would get into overalls and go to
gardening in these lots five miles from where I live.
I neglected to say that I am a preacher, in a church in the
quarter of our city considered fashionable. But, having been a missionary with
some responsibilities for business and building enterprises, I am not
altogether ignorant of construction, and the problems connected with building.
Having grown up on a farm, the use of a saw, axe, shovel, pipe threading tools,
and a soldering iron has for a long time been in my equipment, though seldom
useful in the sort of parish that I now serve.
First, a road had to be built. Just where our lots began the
street ended abruptly, in a great gully. At the City Hall I found that a level
had never been established and, though a sewer ran down through the property
(later I found it wasn’t paid for), no street grade had been set and, in fact,
there was question whether the road had ever been dedicated. A village had been
annexed by the city and no record remained of the village ever having accepted
our part of the road! So I went to a lawyer friend, whose first judgment
indicated action by City Council. Having served on the Mayor’s campaign
committee (non-partisan ticket), I felt free to take minutes of his official
time, I was directed to the councilman who had the major responsibility for
roads and sewers. After two appointments, broken by him, I caught him and ‘he would
see what could be done.’
Water must be introduced so I started that process. The City
Manager, a member of my congregation, said he had no jurisdiction. To the
superintendent of the water works I went. He turned me over to a deputy, an old
Scotchman, who, when he found I had studied theology in Edinburgh, was my sworn
friend and guide.
And I needed one, for we found that there wasn’t a main pipe
line within five hundred feet of our property, and that each of the houses on
that main portion of our road had a separate small pipe line five or six
hundred feet in length.
The ruling is that no new small lines should be put in, but
there was no way to make the houses that now had water from their small
privately owned lines pay for putting in a main line that would lead to the
beginning of our lots. This also entailed village annexation. It meant that the
entire cost of an eight inch main from the nearest street, six hundred feet
away, must be paid by us and that, when it was in the houses on the upper part
of the street, must be connected to this main at my expense. It seemed
hopeless; the cost was twice the price of the lots!
The Mayor, the Manager, the Councilman, the lawyer—several
calls on each—but at length my Scottish friend found a way for the superintendent
to order the line carried to the beginning of our new street (if we had one).
In the City Surveyor’s office, while I studied the maps of
the erstwhile village, I found a middle-aged engineer, who told me that his
first job as a cub was surveying my road. He would set the grades. This was a
real help, for his chief, the City Engineer, had failed to keep an appointment
on the site (it wasn’t on the map and he couldn’t find the place).
So, one night after hours the ex-surveyor ran the grades
across our gully, set the curb line and got his chief’s approval and O.K. When
I offered to pay him, he said he wanted nothing but, if I was willing to trade
work, he would ask me to do something for him. I was willing. He wanted me to
marry him to another; which I did some weeks later! And, so far as I know, they
have lived happily ever since.
But my house was not so easily negotiated. With the water in
and the grade set, we began to fill. School was out, my boys spent most of
their days at the job, and I gave the mornings to the hospital shot and the
garden, the City Hall and the road.
Load after load of filler was required. A friend who wrecks
old buildings gave me, for the hauling, many loads of old brickbats and, with
these, we started to fill the almost bottomless pit.
The dust was terrible and one of the neighbors threatened to
sue. We got a hose and the older boy finally got a barrel of crude oil and
sprinkled over the debris before it was shifted and leveled to grade. Even then
the dust and lime went up like a cloud of smoke.
