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Show Sue and Steve Lutz have been restoring the William Heaps House and uncovering its The Lutzes combined a dining room and a bed room on the main floor of the house to create a history for the past six years. living/ dining space. Pioneer Builder An original settler, town founder, and carpenter named Isaac Goodwin built this house for William Heaps and his family to replace the log cabin they had lived in since moving from Escalante in the late 1890s. The house has a cross- gable floor plan with four rooms downstairs and four rooms up. It is a simple design, attractive and practical. Downstairs there was a parlor with its own porch entrance. It has been converted into a bedroom with a drop- ceiling which absolutely has to go. Upstairs there was one finished bedroom, One of the Family I have a 1915 photograph of the house. The family is standing in the shade of the porch looking sbff and formal. I'm told they were not usually like that. One of the girls in the picture, May Heaps, inherited the house in the 1940s and lived in it until her death in 1980. This information and the picture itself came from William's great- nephew, Lell Heaps, who still lives in town, along with many other descendants of its pioneer settlers. Lell is seventy- something years old and in failing health, but his memory, voice, and guitar playing are still strong. We have become g. @ tp.-: ,'~ 3~ c~ a~ n, nI ot as.- s,- u.,: Tmrrpea any part of this house is square, plumb, ox level. ,.*: f..,-, . L - 2 - - ,,. :..+. , ? . . - .*.-* 3 t - i .- - ? J n f i , 1. ?& ,<?--< Jl,;, - I:::-; , ,.- - . All of my carpentry is compensatory. I try to split the difference between true . . . . -, ' t-.. i- : r. c, f : g! js; q&&&. + .=,, :::$ ; !!$ ;:.$- $, s, yi, i ; i;;;-;$. j; i,.;. $,!& i:-<. , & j& s%&>- ; s:~.~>~,.-,.);:,: 2 ,. ?: Bg!;, . I::;$: ::#;;$ ?$!,;;-.-:; ,:, G. -, ,*, e; . ; 27-: y :. .-. :- >?. - - ,,, i,; - I , ' 1 and ' the facts nf hundred ;&$$ p; ; :,:; : j2:;$;.$: ;,.;: . SF- . - : 2: .- g - 2 - two others were roughly framed, and another had wide rough-sawn planks nailed to the wall and ceiling over old newspapers. Isaac didn't need much in the way of plans. Like many early Utah builders, he built from pictures in his head, transforming those visions with wood and stone, glass and handmade adobe bricks into solid, lovely houses that would last generations. But Isaac was no structural engineer. A few structural members have failed over the years causing some walls and floors to perma-nently tilt or sag. I cannot assume any part of this house is square, plumb, or level. All of my carpentry is compensatory. I try to split the dif-ference between true and the facts of hundred- year- old framing; I try to fool the eye so that the new square window in the trape-zoid- shaped north wall looks right. I jack things up and reinforce them, and, if I do my work right, you won't notice a thing. friends since I bought his family's old home, and he invited me to his fiftieth wedding anniversary. Some elderly guests convinced them-selves I was a relative, probably cousin Hattie's long- lost son, Robert. I told them I wasn't related. I had just bought their Aunt May's house and was fYcing it up. They hugged me and said it was great the old home was back in the family. My further protests were met with cake and punch. I smiled and thanked them. I guess I'm related to the house now too. Old Home Evolution When we bought the house in 2000 it didn't much look like it did in 1915. Sometime in the 19.50~ a~ n itinerant window and sid-ing salesman came to town. He convinced May and her husband, Sam Adams, to replace the original tall, narrow, double- hung windows with short, wide aluminum sliders. Then he covered the unpainted Douglas fir siding with pink asbestos hardboard shin- UTAH P R E S E R V A T I O N 37 A wood- fueled Majestic stove still warms the kitchen in the Steve Lutz has encountered many of the travails of restoring The Lutzes discovered the frame of a transom window Heaps House. an old home, including getting a new square window in a when they restored the tin ceiling in the kitchen. trapezoidal wall to look right. gles. Some of the windows and doors were taken out completely Sam's Handiwork Inside the house are many changes not revealed in the photo. Teasdale didn't get electricity until 1938. Before that, the house was lit by candles, coal oil lamps, and acetylene lights. The acety-lene gas was generated in a heavy steel pressure chamber about the size of two stacked coffee cans installed on the back porch. Inside the chamber, water dripped onto calcium carbide to produce acetylene, the most explosive of all gasses. This gas ran through my house in tiny copper tubing about the thickness of the ink tube in a ballpoint pen. More than one old house exploded and burned due to malfunctioning acetylene generators or lights. The plumbing system also evolved over time. In 1912, the hand-dug water ditch was made obsolete by a pressurized water system feeding a single spigot installed just outside the back door. The Heaps family continued to haul water into the house in buckets and heat it on the wood- fueled cookstove that still graces the kitchen with its warm glow. Some 20 years later a small addition was built on the east side of the house for a toilet, sink, and claw foot bathtub. The walls have seen their share of changes, too. The original lathe-and- plaster walls fell victim to plumbing and wiring projects and were replaced by thck cardboard- like sheets of Celotex covered with and merely sided over. Apparently, he was a hell of a salesman. His handiwork is still evident on half a dozen other houses within a few blocks of here. The breezeway and the attached barn shown in the 1915 pic-ture are gone, replaced by the bathroom addition and a lean- to storeroom on the north side. The old log cabin nearer to the road with its root cellar basement is gone too, but its prior existence is indicated by a depression in the lawn. multiple layers of floral wallpaper. A big archway was cut in the wall between the dining room and bedroom to create the current living room. In one room upstairs, the walls and ceiling were covered by hundreds of tiny pieces of salvaged drywall creating a bizarre mosaic. The other two upstairs rooms had no finish at all and were open to the rafters and studs and the nearly ceaseless wind. Sam Adams was not as handy as the builder Isaac Goodwin. Sam built the bathroom addition that tilts crazily on the east side. He dug a cesspool right next to the foundation on the north side causing that corner of the house to sink about four inches. Later, he had the cesspool pumped out and put a septic tank in the Same hole and then built the storeroom on top of it. His wiring consisted of one main wire running through the entire upstairs floor with short sections stripped bare, twisted together with other wires for branch circuits, and then wrapped with cloth tape. I found these wires when I tore out the floor. I am still amazed they hadn't caused the place to burn down. If that wasn't enough, the notches he cut to accommodate the wiring in the undersized floor joists weakened them to the point that you could see the movement of a person walking upstairs in the downstairs ceiling. Although Sam's work was not up to Isaac's standards, he had his own talents. Sam was a fine horseman and a notable cowboy. He never learned to drive an automobile and traveled only by horse or donkey wagon until his death in 1970. The local kids would always clamor for a ride with him. Sam was also a master leather worker. According to Dwight Taylor, who grew up across the street, the sway- backed shed on our property was Sam's tannery and more. It was a place where boys and old men swapped skills and stories. Sam taught the boys how to skin a deer and turn the carefully- scraped hide into the softest of leather. He told them about Butch Cassidy, Sundance, and the Spanish treasure he had found in a lost cave and was never able to find again. Spirits of the Past On this cold, bright fall night, I wish to visit with Sam and May's ghosts. I have questions that will never be answered with-out them. What were all the other people in the dog- eared pho-tograph like? Was Butch Cassidy as nice a man as people around here still attest? Were there transom windows into the parlor, as 38 UTAH PRESERVATION Sam Adarns b~ lllEl h ~ ssm all addltron to house a bathroom and laundly around 1950. n~ Lutzes plaril lo iazk up a corn* and stab&@ t l ~ efo undation Zo corbect the crazy Ole on & IS example of Samsa bLalxliwouk the j?:~. ii~. sie~ er~ n. gs to sugge. st? Was tl~ crea piano he~: ea nd 1wha. t tru11. e. s made it ri. n. g? You may have heard sorne. cn.?. say, " I'f these. walls cor~ ld only ? n. lk. . ." The 14~~ 311o, s f 1ny ijld house c1. o ta. 11i. r haw foun. d ile. wspapers, rndgazln. es, anci. ent and well- 1: epaire. d Inoec, toy,, Ietre~: s, s i~ oppingI. ist<, bili~, c lothing, and, sdn. 001 lessons. l% ch art- dact saris som. al+ ng to m. e about t1l. t peop1. e wrho 1. ive. d 17. ei: e, ~ vha. tth ey cared about, and. some of what - they wlsh. cd for. I h. npe r- b.?. y would approve. of n ~ ycr a. ftsrndn. ship or at: least of my ~ n. tent. ioi* it.: so wards theu: home.. 1 Itnow the lajt faw. iIjr Chat 1. i~ e. d here. appoves. l? hc. yive been back to I. ocik dround and corni?-~ emt. . Accortiim. g to h. e. m., I haven.' t scre\ fiiecl i t up too badly rj? t. Not ihat- I haeve. n.' t. ixI. a. de rnina1te. s. I've fallen t1x: ough. the ceil~ ng tmhce. whea 1 11~ a. d tihe floor open ~ hrlnile pla. ong a. n. ew joist al. oiig- 5ide am old on, e to sti. ei~ gth, o. ntl. h e floor. I've slloclted myself c? n ind1e. s off ce- nter and lzhd to tear it. dl.] out and stat agah?.. grandfatheo made far h ~ mtha t stands atop an antique pie safe n ihe k~ tciien. Qfc . ou. l: se 1 an not doing all ol tlnis difficult w o ~ kfo l- those who 1i\. ed. here. before. 1 do it to hfifill ] I],> o\ vn t: isi. on. I d( 1 it i. f . to b. ave soi? it. thing to show for: my efforts. Worki. ng 011 tbs f bou. sr contrasts with. m. y job, c ~ l ~ i catl ~ tP. 7. e end of 3 ~ ve?& l eaves me wonderjq just what 1177e a . ~ ~ ~ r n p l j ~ Hheered. . I can see tl? e results. Ti: I bui. ld a wall this week, i. t will still be here in a ~ - ~ i o ~ ~ t . h , a ye&, ~ iiaybern a l- iundred years 3ut trulh he told, I do care. al2ou. t. wr1a. t the. gliosts think of what I am. doljug to their I- kouse. They ace my c. onsul. tan. s, my admsors, the in. spe. ctors of my c.~:;+ i~. I cleli: n. itely do not- want to get a stol?-'; hrc? rk 0rde. r fitom. beyc> nd the gl: ave. So to1 tl~ ern, f or me, for th: hose 5qho rviU live hue a hund. i: ed p; i~: s $>: om, nolq I ' n: y io do things right. I'ke insulation, th. e. heating ducts, th,, e calpentry, and especi. d. IJy the wirin. g, 1 69 to do as jf the !\; h. ole fam. ly were watching. * When [ not worlang ar rh? Urdh Fi. l: e CG i.; lesineA caderny 01- f ixing !~ lso ne ar the other oftlieir 1.905 h. ouses larh his ~ nf~ Sfuee , Stew L I Jis~ p robably l? Id);- 111g l~ luegrassm il old- hme music wr~ tllF US band, langlc 111dgt. C arltan l u n ~ from the " Cantda rrs" Imk at Ihoglendgeb~ nd.(: Oll? This Jhed once howcd a Cnny when Sam Adams shad h ~ ssk ills and stmias. UiA H P11bESERV4TlQDI 39 |
