Our Horatio Alger House

OUR HORATIO ALGER HOUSE On a winter morning in 1926, Dr. Marsh, our family physician and a director of the local bank, entered my father's clothing store. A man of few words, he uttered only five that morning. But those words changed our lives forever, catapulting our family out of a late 19th Century living style into one more characteristic of the mid-20th Century. With a hint of a smile and a twinkle in his eye, he said, "George, the house is yours." The house was the Smith House, a three- story, yellow brick, slate-roofed house built in 1912 with all the conveniences of that period.. With its spacious over hanging eaves and its four-square appearance, it had a bit of the "Frank Lloyd Wright" look -- surely one of the finest -- if not the finest -- house in Cedarville, Ohio, a town of some 1200 people in southern Ohio. At that time, we were living in a small, wood-frame house with no electricity, running water or furnace, no basement, no attic. The downstairs was heated by small gas stoves. The upstairs was unheated and.on cold winter mornings, we would bring our clothes downstairs, dress in front of the gas stove in the living room -- holding our clothes in front of the fire to warm them before putting them on. We had gas lights with fragile mantles that we cautiously lit with matches every night. Our drinking water came from a pump on the back porch. There was also a pump on a sink in the kitchen for cistern water. We used that for everything except drinking. The outdoor toilet was some distance from the house. One ofmy mother's unpleasant chores on winter mornings was walking out there to empty the chamber pots and then washing them in the kitchen. On Saturday night, my mother put a round tub in the middle of the kitchen floor. This was where my brother and I took our baths. It did not offer much privacy but my mother had a simple modesty formula. "If your sisters and their girl friends ever enter the room, just turn around. We're all the same in the back." The small house was cheaply built. My parents were hosts for a social evening of the two adult Sunday School Bible classes of the Methodist Church. After 20 or more people had gathered in our small living room, there was a loud crash as the floor beams gave way under the excess weight. The floor went down some two feet. No one was hurt but it did strengthen my parents' resolve that someday, they would build themselves a new house. "When our ship comes in, 11 my mother would say wistfully. I came to realize that was a euphemism for, "When your grandfather dies. 11 Grandfather owned many farms and he had promised .one to each of his sons after his death. The main campus of Cedarville College, a small liberal arts college of some 150 students, was just across the street from our house. But the gymnasium was on our side of the street -– immediately to the left of our house. On the other side of the gym, stood the Smith House which, with its yellow- brick three-car garage, and spacious grounds occupied a space that could easily have accommodated four houses.