House History

I live in a house that has undergone numerous renovations and additions since it was built in 1907. One day a woman I’d never met before stopped by to chat. She explained that she was a professional genealogist who’d been hired by an 87-year-old woman, Jane, to discover and gather as much as she could from Jane’s past. It turned out Jane’s late husband had grown up in my house as a child, and her in-laws had continued to live here when she was married to their son, so they visited here quite often. She said Jane was wondering if she could have a tour of my house for old time’s sake. Well, I’m not here to be mean to 87-year-old women. Come on over.

A few days later they both came over, and they brought lots of amazing old black and white photos of the house and yard going back to 1933. And Jane was full of stories about the house and the particulars of renovations, and spilled the tea about the people who lived here.

When I let her walk around, and we got the room I keep a table and computer in, she nonchalantly said “Oh, this is where we used to hold the séances.” Um, what? Turns out the whole family were spiritualists, and they held a séance here every Saturday night. If decided if I ever saw the computer mouse moving slowly across the table like a Ouija board pointer, I was out of there. As an aside, how much do I appreciate that my computer knows to put a thingy over the e in séance? I don’t know what that thingy is called, but in my heart I knew I needed one and that my computer knew too, I find endearing.

As we were wrapping up the visit, I could see Jane had some old newspaper articles in her bag that she hadn’t shown me yet, and I could see the word Flood in a headline. I live right by a creek so I guessed she was afraid to show them to me. Somehow I managed to work it into the conversation that I had flood insurance. She immediately got out the old news clippings! They were from 1945 when an ice dam formed and flooded the whole neighborhood. The highway department had to come in with dynamite to blow it up and get things flowing again. The articles had pictures of my house and stories about the then owners, so I was extremely grateful to the genealogist who later scanned the articles and old photos for me.

So, opening the door to strangers, usually a bad idea, but not always.

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This is Jane’s husband by my garage and house. Do you have as many questions about his hat as I do?