Homes and Houses

By Brian J. Meline

A look back into the my past of houses and cabins I've visited, and the feeling of 'home' that I perceived there.
Divided into parts of my first house, my parents houses, cabins and other memories, it's a glimpse into what I think makes a house a home.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Lulu.com
• Release date: Aug 29, 2018
• ISBN: 9781387980741

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Homes and Houses

Homes and Houses

Cots and Cabins

A Trip Down Memory Lane

Before I Forget Where It Is (and Was)

By

Brian J Meline

COPYRIGHT

This memoir represents one person’s viewpoint;

it is not intended to represent the position of the any governmental organization, or privately or publicly held company; nor is it intended to represent or proxy any other person’s views, opinions or beliefs. 

It is a true story only so far as the author tried to put in writing the impression of what was happening to him as a homeowner. It is not to be construed as expounding any political or partisan viewpoint, nor to aid or represent any national, international or extra-national ideology.  In it are references to people living and dead; any such references are the experiences or acquaintances of the author and do not reflect those of any other person, organization or larger political entity.

PHILIPI  PUBLISHING

A CAENTRE  PRINTING CO. AFFILIATE

FIRST EDITION      2018

Copyright c. 2017

by  Brian J. Meline

All rights reserved.  No part of this work may be reproduced or transmitted in any form by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying and recording, or by any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publisher.

Meline, Brian Joel,1955 -

Homes and Houses

ISBN: 978-1-387-98074-1

Created in the United States of America

F E D C B A 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

Foreword

Like any child in America, I liked living in a house. I am thankful that my parents wanted to get a house (they got several), and the Government made it easy.

My parents had three houses, almost like they couldn’t make up their minds what they wanted. They were planning to sell the third and find a cabin in northern Minnesota.

There were always wonderful ‘home’ experiences in my youth, places where I or we stayed with a family for a week, once a year or once a decade. I would always go there and know I was in a sacred place where enjoyment and happiness reigned.

When I was a teen-ager I had drawn up plans for the perfect house, for me anyway. It was designed with what I needed for a living space, a simple four-cornered layout. It may not have been practical to me or anyone else, but it was good, in concept.

In the 1990’s I bought my first house – which seemed to go surprisingly easy. Maybe I was prepared for the experience after all that time; I certainly had enough money and credit to get a mortgage.

Before and after that experience were many other places; call them destinations. This is my account.

Dedication

For my Parents, Grandparents,

Aunts, Uncles, and many, many friends.

Part One: Beginnings

The Coon Rapids House

12011 Wintergreen St. NW; 1994-2003.

In 1993, I was working in a laboratory and things were good. My co-workers wanted to know why I didn’t have a house. In my mind I had settled into what was a comfortable routine and I was happy with it. I worked the days, went rowing in the afternoons (I was in the competitive program), and went home at night. But something was missing for me.

In the 1990’s I was restless for something else to be happening for me. I wanted something to do! I wasn’t going to get married soon, so I bought a shotgun and started hunting with a friend. He had a dog, a golden retriever named Jessie. Instant friendship started, which it will with most dogs.

This was OK for a while, but it involved driving up to the North Shore of Minnesota to hunt grouse, for that is what my friend liked to do. This was an easy sell for me, as I have liked that area since my parents took us there as children. We would also go skeet–shooting on the weekends. Then he moved to northern Minnesota, and we saw each other only in the fall when Small-Game-Hunting season began. There were several seasons of getting skunked after the grouse population crashed, I decided to do a rethink.

It was at this time that my third and final season of competitive rowing ended in 1993. I felt like that experience was over, after a season where I rowed only a single scull. I didn’t participate with the main group, and so I was on the edge. My co-workers urged me to get a house, and I said Yes, I would like a house. I want something to do on the weekend outside. And so, I started looking.

House Hunting

I don’t suppose that I was in any way different than anyone else doing this, and maybe not any smarter. At the beginning I wasn’t sure what I was looking for, but I was planning to buy an existing house. Later, maybe, I could build one.

After going through several houses and other people’s mistakes, cover-ups and experiments, I found I wanted a house that was unblemished, new and available. I walked into the 12011 Wintergreen property, and I thought "this was it"! My agent said she could see my face light up when I saw the house, and she knew that this was it. But like any other canny operator, she kept mum and wanted to see if I was serious. I asked to see it a second time, and as I walked through it I was certain this was it; Right style, right size, right yard, and mostly unfinished. In fact, the woman that lived there had done so for six months, and then moved out. It was hardly even lived in.

A month later I was closing on the property and moving my belongings in at the end of March 1994.

There are several interesting elements about this time and its events. At the time, my three co-workers also bought houses in the same year, though maybe not so extraordinary a thing in the Roaring-90’s. It was mentioned in the company newsletter.

Another was the times. I had graduated from university in 1985 and started working in my field in 1986. In that year Congress had passed a new tax act that allowed retirement savings accounts (IRAs) in the stock market. This allowed me to build a retirement portfolio. The Roaring-90’s doubled this savings account several times, as well as the 401K I had through my laboratory jobs.

The housing industry has used a metric to measure the health of the industry. The Case-Schiller Index measures the valuation of houses for the national economy, attempting to remove regional variations. It was at the lowest point in a decade in the period of late 1993 to early 1994. I felt I got a decent house for a decent price. But I also have had the feeling that I arrived at the right time and place. I didn’t really know it for ten years when I looked back at what happened, but the 90’s was the best time of my life, and this can be distilled down into the house where I lived. I really had the feeling that – at least for myself – I had arrived where I wanted to be.

Just as an aside, the house was built in 1992; the woman who lived there (the builder’s mother-in-law) stayed a few months and then moved up to Hinckley. It sat vacant for eighteen months as the housing industry dealt with one of its low activity periods. There had been a recession in the early 90’s, and things were once more just beginning to get going.

I am captured once more looking now at these first pictures (taken on the second look at the house); I was captured by the thrill of the home-shopping experience. I am also admiring this look at the house again. Not knowing a lot about the style of decorations or the milling of the kitchen cabinets, I just loved the oak veneer and molding on the doorways around the kitchen. It was a design that was ideal for me at that time – a wide-open plan (or nearly) allowing free movement. The house had all the appliances that a bachelor would need (including a garage-door-opener and a 2-door garage) to hold forth for a crowd no matter how many people came to visit (unless it was more than twenty).

To this day, when ever I move somewhere, I love the fact that the new place is empty, and a blank slate. An earlier house I looked at was a HUD house, and the appliances were stripped out of it and it had evidence of a fire (with the burn smell still in place). We looked at another house, a rambler with a split-entry, in Blaine, Minnesota that was newly built and unlived in, but it too was lacking some appliances and I would have had to spend $3000 just to equip the house. I put in an offer reflecting the lack of appliances, but the seller wouldn’t budge. The rambler in Coon Rapids had everything, including a standard layout and it was $4000 less that previous one. After a little dickering, the offer was accepted and I was now a happy home-owner, or at least would be when I closed at the end of the month.

Walking into this house my agent could see, as I said, from the very first that I liked the house. The basement was unfinished (I never did put in a ceiling), and the house mostly pristine (there was leaking around the furnace chimney/vent). The washer was old and I should have replaced it immediately, but the house was ready to go. For all I could see, it was a perfect fit!

The layout of the rooms and kitchen was appealing. The openness of the space and the character of the layout, even now are inviting and I want to go back to that time and place and do it all over again. But, the time has moved on, as I did.

First Home

I settled into this home, this Coon Rapids House, and thought this is it; I don’t need to go anywhere else. Time and circumstance changed this viewpoint. Nonetheless, I went on a shopping spree to put furniture into my new domain.

April of ’94 was turning nice until we were hit with a six-inch snow fall. I don’t think I even had a shovel to clear the driveway. During the house-hunting in March when I first saw the property there was eight-inches plus on the ground and that made it tough to walk around to the back yard and look at things. It was white as far as I could see. (There was also a gas-leak that needed fixing, I remember). Getting another snow in April, I thought will this stupid weather never END! But it did.

My mind’s wheels were spinning furiously in the first weeks as I waited for it to become nice and I organized the space, or spaces, of the home. For a bachelor used to living in apartments this was a major upgrade in roominess, and it was daunting for me. I didn’t know how to fill the space(s).

There were certain relatives who were hinting that I should put a wife in the house, but I certainly didn’t feel like there was any hurry. My mother and father trained me to be too well-rounded to need a house-keeper. The place came with nearly everything I needed to subsist; well, more than subsist.

The layout was called the new open plan. A word on real-estate nomenclature (henceforth called gibberish). The season or year might bring in entirely new meanings of some well-worn phrases. Tuck-under-Split: this used to mean a split level with a garage under the bedrooms, though I heard that car-exhaust could leak into the bedrooms from below. Current definition has Tuck-under-Split meaning split-entry, where from the entry-foyer stairs go up into the living room and stairs go down to a lower level. And there could still be a basement below that.

My new house was known as a modified A-frame, and a modern version of the old pole-lodges that really were A-frames. My house was a standard American Rambler (not Ranch, that’s a different layout), but with some unique alterations. Older ramblers had the kitchen closed off from the living room but often had three bedrooms on one end with a single bathroom. This rambler had a two-car garage, and from the front door had a living room that flowed into the kitchen and dining room. The latter was small and ended up being a traffic way, as on one side were French-windows, and the other side had stairs that went down to the basement.

The master bedroom (front wall) was larger than usual, as was the second bedroom (facing the back), but a potential third bedroom was nixed, instead each bedroom having a walk-in closet. The bathroom had an extended closet in which the builder had put the laundry (so the old-woman didn’t have to walk down-stairs). It was nice, but unnecessary for me. On one occasion I put my mom in the master, older brother in the other bedroom, and I slept in the basement with the dog. It was hot weather and I didn’t run the air conditioner at night, so I got the best of the deal.

Later on, talking with the neighbor, he couldn’t believe that the city (of Coon Rapids) allowed the builder to put a single-family home on that lot, which was one-half acre. The lot to the north was a duplex home, and there was another duplex home south of my house. Thinking on it, it does seem like the city goofed up. Maybe they couldn’t get anyone to build there and they didn’t like the empty lot, so they allowed it. This was in the depths of the housing market, and the 90’s hadn’t started roaring yet. The City needed income and a builder was ready to put a house there. Outside it was an ordinary looking house on a big lot; it could have easily fit on a quarter-acre.

The builder had put the house forty feet back from the road (like the other houses), and had excavated the back partially to expose the basement windows on the northeast side of the back. He put in a retaining wall to hold the sandy soil so that some owner could put in a deck off the French-windows. Well, guess what project number one in the yard was?

The house didn’t come with a water-softener, so with help from some workmates, I got the piping put in and fixed up the house with a water-softener. The basement pretty much sat unused for the next three years. I did get a solid-core door that I put on posts, turning it into a work-table, but that was it.

For some reason I felt the tremendous urge to get going, though my mother said I didn’t need to hurry – I had plenty of time. But I begged to differ, so I got underway in May to start building a deck. Right about the same time I got myself a dog, picked out of the newspaper. In reflection, I acted with undue haste, and if I had been a little more relaxed perhaps things would have been different. The new-dog-owner role was one I wasn’t quite ready to begin doing, but needs must.

There are cute pictures of the dog sitting amongst the work, as she insinuated herself into every situation that involved me. There was not a few times that a 2x4