The Houses Where My Grandparents Lived (62 Years of Stories)

Bob & Phyllis on their wedding day in 1952

            Bob and Phyllis are my mom’s parents and also my wonderful grandparents. Bob and Phyllis were both born in December 1933, only 19 days apart from each other. They got married on November 2, 1952.

            I love to listen to their stories.  There are some impressive stories:  My grandma dated James Dean, and my grandpa met Billy Graham because he played on the same high school basketball team as Billy Graham’s brother-in-law.  But even more than I love those claim-to-fame stories, I love the stories they tell about the humor they found in family life and all the stories about how money was nothing compared to love.

            This weekend I went to their house.  This is the house that Grandma and Grandpa built in 1964.  Because I’m preparing to move into my first house—the house that I built, I wanted to ask my grandparents about the houses they lived in together and about their journey of building this house.

            Grandma was excited to give me some household items that I will need when I move in, including a great battery-powered lantern for when the electricity goes out.  Grandma told Grandpa to get some batteries to put in it, so I wouldn’t have to buy batteries.  Then Grandpa growled because it took 3 batteries instead of 2. 

            “You’re costing me more money, Mary,” he joked with me.

            Grandma also gave me a Betty Crocker cookbook, and I’m in love with it.  I flipped through the pages at the dining table as everyone else finished their chili.  Grandma then showed me the 62-year-old Betty Crocker cookbook that she had when she got married in 1952. 

            “That’s how I learned to cook,” Grandma told me.  She knew how to cook some as a teenager, but all the instructions in that Betty Crocker cookbook helped her learn how to do things like make her own noodles.  She told me, “Make sure you read through those cooking tips, Mary.” I definitely will.

Phyllis

Bob

            I asked Grandma, “Where did you and Grandpa first live after you got married?”

            Grandma smiled as she thought back to their apartment 62 years ago.  This is how their story begins…

            The first time Bob asked Phyllis to marry him, he just said, “Let’s get married.”

            Phyllis said, “Bob, I can’t marry you! You don’t have a job.”

            When they were dating, Phyllis remembers telling Bob about a movie she wanted to go see, and Bob said, “I’d have to take money out of my savings account for us to go see it.” But after Phyllis said he had to get a job before she’d marry him, Bob got a job.  After a month at that job, he bought her a diamond ring.  He gave it to Phyllis and said, “Let’s set a date.”

            Phyllis was excited to share the news of her engagement with her friend, but her friend asked her, “Do you think he can support you?”

            Phyllis answered, “Who cares?!!” Apparently, love was more important to her.  (But Grandma did tell me that she doesn’t advise for women today to take that attitude when accepting a marriage proposal. J)

            Phyllis said, “He gave me the ring at the first of September.  I knew that married couples didn’t have any money, so I went to the store to buy me some clothes. I put them on layaway and figured out how long it would take for me to pay for them.  That’s when we set the date for November 2.”

            They got married on November 2, 1952.  Phyllis said that Bob was always romantic, but when they were leaving for their honeymoon, he turned around and asked her, “Do you have your money with you?”

            Bob joked, “Hey! It was a necessary question.  We couldn’t go if she couldn’t pay her own way.”

            Their first place was an apartment in Upland over the bank that Bob worked at.  Phyllis remembers that Bob’s ex-girlfriend worked at the grocery store next to the bank, but Bob does not remember that.  J The apartment was an open space that had a kitchen, a dining room, and a bedroom.  The bathroom was outside the apartment door in the hallway, and it had only a toilet and a sink—no shower or bathtub.

            “Yes, it wasn’t very convenient,” Grandpa said. They often took sponge baths and went to Bob’s mother’s house to shower.  Once after Bob had taken his clothes to his mother’s to shower, he lost his billfold, but someone in their small town brought it to him.

            “It probably only had 3 or 4 dollars in it,” Grandpa laughed. “But it was nice for him to bring it back to me.”

            Bob remembers that Phyllis made more money than him that first year.  Her bring home pay from her bookkeeping job at the local financing company was $34, and Bob made $26.25.

            Their first daughter, Terri, was born when they lived in that apartment.  They kept her crib by their bed.  When she was older, they put her crib in the dining room.

            Then Bob bought a house in Upland for $3500 that was only a few blocks down from his mother’s house.  Phyllis said, “It had an upstairs, but we never used it. Bob told a guy from the bank that he could sleep up there, and it wouldn’t bother us.” Then she added, “He paid Bob a little rent, so that’s why he said it wouldn’t bother us.”

            Phyllis remembers the backyard was a good size and backed into the alley.  She had a garden and a clothesline in the backyard.  “I hung my clothes out on the line everyday until my mother-in-law gave me her dryer.” Phyllis smiled. “I guess after I had a few more kids, she felt I needed it more than she did.”

            Phyllis remembers that she had an electric washer, but it wasn’t automatic.  She had to put clothes in piece-by-piece to get all the suds out of the clothing.  Then she rinsed the clothes and put the pieces back in the machine, which would dump them into the laundry basket for her to take out to the clothesline. 

            She said, “Back then, I just thought it was wonderful. I loved to do laundry.  Bob wore suits, and we had to send those to the cleaners. But I washed his white shirts, and of course, you had to iron everything.” Phyllis would get all the laundry done in the mornings and then have lunch ready for Bob when he came home for lunch everyday.

Bob with his parents & baby Terri

            After Bob and Phyllis had their daughter Terri, they had a son Tim and another son Tom. That made 3 kids in 2 and half years.  Then they soon became pregnant again with another daughter—my mom Tonia.

            My mom joked, “You probably weren’t very happy to be pregnant with me.”

            Grandma said, “Oh no! There weren’t any of my kids that I wasn’t happy to be pregnant for.”

            At that time, Bob took on the role of running the bank in Shirley.  He was driving back and forth from Upland to Shirley everyday, which they said was a long trip before the interstate.  Phyllis suggested for him to rent a little place to sleep during the week and then come home on the weekends. But he didn’t want to be away from his family, so they moved in the nearby town in Wilkinson in January 1957 when Phyllis was pregnant with Tonia. 

            They rented the house in Wilkinson for about 6 months.  Phyllis and Bob slept in the dining room, the boys slept in one bedroom, and Terri slept in another bedroom.  Phyllis said that it was hard to leave Upland because she missed her parents and her in-laws so much.  Bob said it was probably harder for Phyllis because she was home all day with the kids, but he was busy with his work, so he didn’t get lonely.  They went to Upland to visit family almost every Saturday. 

            Still Phyllis wanted to call her parents and her mother-in-law often.  Bob wasn’t happy about the phone bills because he was born during the Great Depression, and he was taught to conserve money as much as possible.  But they realized the phone conversations were important for Phyllis to feel connected to the rest of their family.

            After a few months of renting, they looked at a house to buy in the country.  An elderly couple had owned that house.  That couple didn’t have anyone to help them take care of the house, so it was dirty and dusty. Also, the guy had just died in that house.  Phyllis told Bob, “If you buy this house, I will divorce you.” 

            They moved in a month later.

            I laughed and asked Grandpa, “What were you thinking—buying that house after Grandma told you she’d divorce you?”

            He said, “I was thinking that I was tired of living in Wilkinson in such a small cracker box house!”

            Grandma said, “Oh, Bob, it was the horses too!”

            “Well, yes.  I needed a place to put my horses. My horses were still in Upland. That house had a barn, it was close to the bank, and I couldn’t find anything else.  Besides Phyllis was 7 months pregnant with Tonia, so I didn’t think she’d run off with another man.”  He winked at me.

            Then he said, “Admit it, Phyllis! You loved me and wouldn’t leave me!”

            Grandma looked at me.  “Yes, I loved him and wouldn’t leave.”

            Bob first started liking horses because of his grandpa. His grandpa lived with them when Bob was a little boy. When Bob was 3 years old, his grandpa gave Bob his first ride on his grandpa’s workhorse.  When Bob was about 8 or 9, his grandpa would put him in the saddle and let him ride around the barn most days after work.  After Bob’s grandpa died in 1943 or 1944, Bob’s dad bought him a horse. 

            Bob said that as an adult, he always had 3 or 4 horses at a time.  He quickly recalled several of the horses’ names: Lucky, Spotty, Buck, Yeller, Lady Winter, Sam, Whiskers, Joe, Fancy. They also remembered a big black horse Bob bought just after they got married, which he kept at his mother’s.  He would ride that horse in parades.  Phyllis would use white shoe polish to paint his hooves, and she would take the truck and trailer to pick Bob and the horse up.

            Before they moved into that house in the country, Bob’s mother, Mary, came to stay with them to help.  Bob’s mother would stay with the kids during the day, so Phyllis could go over and work on the house.  Then Bob would stay with the kids during the evening while Phyllis and Mary would work on the house. They papered and painted the whole house.  Phyllis’s brother-in-law Paul built brand new cabinets for someone who didn’t take them, so he gave them to her.  When they eventually moved, she hated to leave those cabinets.

            Even though the house had not been appealing at first, Phyllis said she was thrilled to move to the country because she had grown up in the country.  She said, “We made the bedroom where the man died into the kitchen.  You see, the kitchen they had was an add-on that wasn’t a bit nice, so we just used it to put the pups in—we always had pups—and to do my laundry out there.  The boys slept in the enclosed back porch that we made into a bedroom.  The girls slept in another bedroom, and then Bob and I slept in our bedroom.  The front porch was the nicest thing about that house, but I never had any time to sit out there.”

            Over the next five years, they had two more children—their daughter Tami and their son Tracy.  They decided in 1963 to build a new house.

            I asked Grandpa why he decided to build a house at that time.

            “Too many kids and too little house,” he said. “I had the opportunity to buy 15 acres just outside of town.  Later I bought 17 acres that were adjacent to it.  The man sold it to me for $100 an acre.  I offered him more for it, but he was moving to Indianapolis and just wanted to get rid of it.”

            Grandma said she wanted to build the new house after she got a phone call from Terri’s teacher.  The teacher said Terri wanted to sleep at school.  Terri had told her teacher that she couldn’t sleep at home because her little sisters slept in her bedroom and would cry in the middle of the night.

             After they bought the land, they went to look at the show homes.  Grandpa remembers that while they were looking at the different models, one of the kids went inside the show home and went poop in the toilet—which wasn’t a working toilet!  Bob was embarrassed, but now they laugh about it.  He said, “At least the people that worked there laughed about it.”

            I asked them if they had any arguments about what kind of house to build.  That sparked their familiar, loving bickering…

            Phyllis: “I wanted a front porch!”

            Bob:  “I built you the sun porch out back!”

            Phyllis:  “Yes, and I like that!” J

            They decided on a model that they both liked.  Then Bob went back in a couple of days to sign the paperwork.  At that meeting, Bob decided that with all their kids, he should extend the model and add two more bedrooms.  That meant they were able to have a 5-bedroom home for 8 people. 

            It took about 3 months for the house to be built. They moved into the house in March 1964.  They have lived there now for 50 years.  Fifty years of Christmas parties and graduation celebrations and Mother’s Day dinners and Father’s Day steaks and horse rides in the barn and Snickers in the freezer and good-bye hugs and kisses for the grandkids.  Fifty years of Grandma offering us chocolate and Grandpa singing and using the same paper plate for a whole week at a time.  J

            Grandma and Grandpa are giving me their refrigerator to put in my house.  It will be great to have a piece of their house in my new house.  I’m sure I will keep some Snickers in the freezer and my new Betty Crocker cookbook in my kitchen.  I’ll be grateful for a bathroom that is attached to my bedroom that not only has a toilet and sink—but also a shower and tub! Who knows if I’ll live there for 50 years…but I am grateful for grandparents who love me and for the opportunity to make my new memories in my new house!

 

I love this picture of Grandma & Grandpa dressed up last year at Halloween! :)