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Show Around the hot stove in the store their parents had less pleasant stories to tell of what had awaited them when they arrived and journeyed to the "regulation homestead house" they had paid for to the "company." Those houses were minimum size, 12 by 16 feet, all right, but they'd been thrown together hastily, jerry-built of new pine lumber oozing with resin. The desert sun shrank the green boards, all 12 x 1 inch planks, roof and walls and floor, until wide cracks appeared. The boards often warped and even "cupped" as though beginning to form pipes, occasionally pulling out the few nails and showing a tendency to curl at the ends. The shrinking and cupping might produce cracks wide enough, as the saying went, "so you could throw a cat through." Many a husband had a hard time explaining to his wife when she arrived on the passenger train. All he could do was curse the company. Some settlers built another more satisfactory house, if they could find the money, and turned the original shack into a barn for their team and milk cow. Or, if the lumber had not been too green, they would leakproof the roof with tarpaper. They'd nail battens over the wall cracks outside and "paper" the inside with rough building paper or "beaver board," to help hold out the wind. Mother had no such dismal surprise to confront her. In his varied labors before he attained the M.D., Father had learned much about construction. He had managed to obtain reasonably well-seasoned lumber, shiplap for the walls and sound, good beams for joists and rafters. Mother was relieved and delighted to find Father, although sunburned, in high spirits despite the long hours of work he had put in and the slapdash meals he and his two helpers had prepared. Father's aids, unemployed carpenters "kicked off" a freight at Thermo watertank by a zealous train crew, and he had cooked over a campfire at first and then over the cookstove in the partly finished kitchen. The three had wrought miracles in the short time they had. Although still un-painted outside and unpapered inside, the main building stood large and imposing, 30 |
