That I overlooked before…
This (see below) is a Sears House, and more specifically a Sears “Dover.” Note the clipped gables on the roof’s edge (also called a jerkinhead). This house is in Alton, Illinois and it’s one of my favorite Sears Homes, and this Dover is the prettiest little Dover I’ve ever seen.
A pretty little Sears Dover in Alton, IL
Recently, I traveled to southern Illinois to re-visit the site of the old Sears Mill.
In late 1911, Sears spent about $1 million to build a state-of-the-art mill just outside of Cairo, Illinois. The mill was actually located in a tiny burg called Urbandale. The Sears Mill was an impressive operation, covering 40 acres and employing about 80 full-time workers. About 20 acres were “under roof.” In other words, the site had 20 acres of buildings.
That’s a lot of buildings.
Each day, the railroad cars brought enormous quantities of yellow pine and cypress into the mill, right out of the virgin forests in Louisiana and Mississippi. Each day, those workers turned those logs into 10-12 kit homes. You read that right: Hard-working men, using powerful saws and planers and other massive machines, carved those trees into kit homes. Kit homes with 30,000 pieces. That’s a lot of lumber.
In 2003, when doing research for my book, “The Houses That Sears Built,” I traveled to the site of the old mill. Not much to see there, but a couple little Sears Homes and a lot of woods and a couple bean fields.
Fast forward seven years to 2010.
Now I’m writing a new book about Sears Homes, and I decided it was time to dig a little deeper.
This time around, I contacted Richard Kearney, a local historian, long-time Cairo resident and all-around Smart Cookie and good man.
I asked him if he might have time to spend a day with me, helping me navigate the back roads of southern Illinois. To my delight, he readily agreed. Our day together could not have been any more delightful. With Richard’s fantastic knowledge of the area, I learned so much more about the old Sears Mill and its connection to local history.
One small example: Soon after entering Urbandale, we turned onto “Sears Road” (the site of the old mill), and Richard spoke up and said, “You know, this used to be known as ‘Sears Roebuck Road.’”
I replied, “You’re kidding!”
He said, “It’s true. This road went all the way through, and when the Interstate came through, it cut the road right in half, creating two dead end streets on either side of I-57.”
This is the kind of quirky history that I just adore. I was enthralled.
“On the other side of the interstate,” Richard said, “you’ll find the other half of this road. It’s now called “Roebuck Road.”
Now I’ve been writing about Sears Homes for many years and I’ve been to Cairo many times and I’ve spent many hours learning more about Sears and Cairo and the mill, but I’d never heard any of this.
I asked Richard to show me where Roebuck Road was. He gladly obliged.
And there it was - Roebuck Road. And there was yet another bonus! Behind the Roebuck Road sign was a perfect little Sears house. It was a Sears Wexford.
A Sears House on Roebuck Road. Or maybe it’s a Roebuck house on Roebuck Road?
Either way, Garmin apparently never got the memo that Sears Roebuck Road had been sliced into two pieces.
Sears Road - in Urbandale
Note the little Sears Wexford in the background!
Someone needs to tell Garmin that Sears and Roebuck are now divorced - thanks to the Interstate!
Richard - thank you so much - for sharing your knowledge and being such a good sport and giving up an entire day of your life to help me find my way around the southern-most tip of Illinois. You’re a real trooper and a treasure-trove of knowlege!
Sears Modern Home #163 in Taylorville, Illinois.
Whilst in Taylorville, Illinois last week, I found something I’d never seen before: A Sears Modern Home Model #163. I talked with my dear friend Rebecca Hunter and learned that she’d never seen one either. In other words, this is a very rare model. And there it sits in Taylorville, a victim of insensitive remodeling.
This once-grand house has now been converted into a multi-family dwelling, which is especially sad.
As I’ve driven around the Illinois countryside, I’ve found that too many Sears Homes are in deplorable shape and are being treated like yesterday’s garbage. Hopefully, my new book on Sears Homes will do a little something to stem this onerous problem.
Back in the day, Ladies Home Journal magazine really was about women and housing. Today, it’s more about high-fat cake recipes and low-fat diets, but that’s another story…
In the first decade of the new century, Ladies’ Home Journal consistently featured a majority of articles centered on homeownership. The February 1911 issue was devoted to the new housing style: Bungalows. One headline said, “The Bungalow, because of its easy housekeeping possibilities is becoming more popular every year and bungalows show what can be done with a little money wisely spent.” The same issue featured these articles:
When you build a little house (common mistakes to avoid)
How I built this house for $700
The Bungalow - from $250 - $2500
What I did with an old farmhouse
Two houses built for less than $1500
What can be done with old houses
A fireproof house for less than $4000
If a woman must earn her living at home (A house planned by a woman to meet this need.)
It seems as though that the ladies were ahead of the men on this bungalow thing. Whilst Ladies Home Journal was promoting bungalows, American Carpenter and Builder described them as “tiresome.”
Craftsman houses and odd bungalows will have their day. People may like them now, but it is an extreme type and will become tiresome in course of time. The uncompromising squareness in the craftsman style, with its small wall space does not permit of much artistic decoration (June 1913).
Within the pages of the 1920s LHJ, I was delighted to discover this advertisement for a catalog of mail-order kit homes. The next picture below features a real, live GVT #633 in Roanoke, Virginia.
Advertisement in LHJ for Gordon Van Tine/Wardway Homes
Wardway Home in Roanoke, VA
Dr. Joseph Lister - a 19th Century physician - is largely responsible for the bungalow craze, but that’s one tidbit that I’ve never seen in my books on architectural history. The fact is, Joseph Lister and his germ theory dramatically changed the way Americans thought about their homes.
For so many years, mothers could only watch as their young children died from any one of a myriad of “common” diseases. And then in the late 1800s, Dr. Joseph Lister discovered that germs were culprit. Mothers and fathers, weary of burying their infants, had a new arch enemy: household dirt. As is explained in the 1908 book, Household Discoveries and Mrs. Curtis’ Cook-Book:
Not many years ago disease was most often deemed the act of Providence as a chastening or visitation for moral evil. Many diseases are now known to be merely human ignorance and uncleanliness. The sins for which humanity suffers are violations of the laws of sanitation and hygiene, or simply the one great law of absolute sanitary cleanliness… Every symptom of preventable disease and communicable disease…should suggest the question: “Is the cause of this illness an unsanitary condition within my control?”
Now that the enemy had been identified, modern women attacked it with every tool in their arsenal. Keeping a house clean was far more than a matter of mere pride: The well-being, nay, the very life of one’s child might depend upon a home’s cleanliness. What mother wanted to sit at the bedside of their sick child, tenderly wiping his fevered brow and pondering the awful question: “Was the cause of this illness an unsanitary condition within my control?”
Because of Dr. Lister and his germ theory, the ostentatious, dust-bunny-collecting Queen Anne, with its ornate woodwork, fretwork and gingerbread fell from favor with a resounding thud.
Simplicity, harmony and durability are the keynotes of the modern tendency. The general intention seems to be to avoid everything that is superfluous; everything that has a tendency to catch and hold dust or dirt. Wooden bedsteads are being replaced by iron or brass; stuffed and upholstered furniture by articles of plain wood and leather. Bric-a-brac, flounces, valances and all other superfluous articles are much less fashionable (from Household Discoveries and Mrs. Curtis’ Cook-Book).
Remember the movie “It’s A Wonderful Life”? There’s a 1920s scene where George Baily and his girlfriend pause in front of the massive Second Empire house. It sits abandoned and empty, deteriorating day by day. This was not an uncommon fate for Victorian manses in post-germ theory America. Who knew what germs lay in wait within its hard-to-clean walls?
The February 1911 Ladies’ Home Journal was devoted to the new housing style: Bungalows. One headline said, “The Bungalow, because of its easy housekeeping possibilities is becoming more popular every year.
And all because of Dr. Lister.
(By the way, Dr. Lister did not invent the popular mouthwash but it was named after him and his discoveries.)
Magazines in the early 1900s extolled the value of cleansers that were effective in killing germs. These advertisements (see two ads below) are from a 1924 Ladies’ Home Journal. Both promote the importance of germ-killing chemicals for the “safe” household.
Close-up of text
From the 1934 Ladies’ Home Journal comes this not-so-subtle message that if you don’t immediately purchase Djer-Kiss perfume, the only lovin’ you’ll get is when you kiss yourself in the mirror. Then again, if a fella catches you doing this, you can also kiss your dating life good-bye.
Or maybe (after a third read of the text below), the message is, “Buy this perfume and you’ll be so irresistible, you won’t be able to resist your own beautiful self.”
Not sure which message is more disturbing…
Our vocabulary has really undergone many changes in the last 100 years. Below is an advertisement that appeared in a 1904 Ladies’ Home Journal. At first glance, the phrase “Receipts for Frozen Dainties” conjures up an image of someone leaving the receipt for their Fruit of the Looms outside overnight in a chilly car.
In fact, “receipt” is an old word for recipe, and a “dainty” is not an undergarment but a small pastry - suitable for high tea, I’d imagine.
But laying all that to the side, the clown pictured below looks more like a psychotic axe murderer than a gracious host.
Other than promoting emotional eating, I'm not sure how this image is supposed to help sell the advertised products.
This ad from the 1926 Ladies Home Journal was interesting (as they all are) but also had a surprise. Look at this graphic below. The “economy rules” line in the advertisement makes sense, but “The Little Red Schoolhouse of Retailing”?
To my further shock, a google search for the term “Little Red Schoolhouse of Retailing” turns up zero results.
I’d love to know what that’s about. From my 21st Century perspective, I’d say that A&P was striving to be the antithesis of Walmart.
Interesting advertisement from a 1926 Ladies' Home Journal
Larger view of the same advertisment
Thanks to Palmolive’s beauty soap, “Youth is being retained.” Or so promises the ad in this Ladies Home Journal from 1926.
“Modern mothers” (who use these products) compete with their “daughters of debutante age.”
Uh huh.
Studies show that when we read so-called “women’s magazines,” our self-esteem plummets several percentage points. Which is good if you’re an advertiser, because that opens the door to the multi-billion dollar “cures” for ugly. Even more disturbing is the allusion here that age = unattractiveness.
In The Beauty Myth, Naomi Wolf writes that women’s magazines make their money by selling women on the idea that they’re suffering from a disease of “terminal ugliness.”
While scanning the pages of these early 20th Century women’s magazines, I was aghast to learn that manufacturers of so-called beauty products have been selling “terminal ugliness” for more than 80 years now.
The saddest part is, we keep buying into it.
“Glorious music reproduced, as you have never heard it before!”
So reads the advertisement in the August 1926 Ladies’ Home Journal. The item being pitched is the latest and greatest from Victrola: The Othorphonic Record Player (with Tungstone needle!).
This must have been a pricey little affair, for the ad reads that an electric motor would increase the Victrola’s price by a hefty $35. However the “hidden electric motor” meant there was nothing to wind!
To my surprise and delight, the word “orthophonic” can be found in the dictionary. It means, “accurate reproduction of sound.”
This ad is quite interesting. Before there was television, apparently families sat around and stared at the radio.
Victorola Orthophonic
This ad is from a 1905 Ladies’ Home Journal, and in the early 1900s, x-rays and radiation was perceived to be scientific and modern and wonderful. I’ve no idea what this advertisement is suggesting, but it sounds like “X-Ray Polish” is a potent little chemical.
I guess this graphic answers the question, how many demons can dance on the head of a stove? I’m not sure. And I don’t know about the one at the bottom, pulling up the banner that reads, “Cut that out.”
Perhaps the devil is in the details.
According to historian Paul Frame, Radium was a newly discovered, valuable commodity in the early 1900s, and was perhaps even more valuable than gold.
Frame writes, “The term ‘Radium’ was incorporated into the brand names of any number of products even when these products didn’t actually contain radium. The same was true for the term X-ray.”
Learn more at his website here.
I'm not really sure what they're selling here
It was Christmas Eve night 2001 when Mom and I said our goodbyes. Our family (my husband and our three daughters) had come to town to visit her for the holidays. Standing at her back door the night before Christmas, we made plans for Christmas morning, and then Mom and I said our good-byes.
She threw her arms around me, pressed her soft cheek against mine and held me tight as we swayed left and right. She unclasped her arms and grabbed my upper arms and pushed me back a little bit and looked into my eyes. She put her hands up on either side of my face and said, “My beautiful, beautiful daughter. I love you.”
She hugged me again and said, “I love you, I love you, I love you.” I responded in kind. That was the last visit I had with my mother. As good-byes go, it was the best.
It was my expectation that she’d live far beyond January 2002. She was so healthy and strong. I had no inkling or idea that Christmas Even 2001 would be our last goodbye. This was an impossibly hard lesson to learn. Sometimes, people go to bed at night and leave for heaven in their sleep. Sometimes, there are no second chances to ask one more question. Sometimes, the last words you may ever hear someone say are, “Shut the door fast and don’t let the squirrels get in the house.”
It’s been eight years today and I still miss her so very much.
My mother with three of her granddaughters (about 1986)
Mom with her new granddaughter in Summer 1987
Thanks to terrorist du jour Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab , airline passengers will now have to remain seated one hour before landing, and during that last hour, they’ll not be allowed to access to their own carry-on bags (or anyone else’s, I would hope). For those who have been avoiding the television for the last 48 hours, Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab is the Nigerian charged with trying to blow up NWA Flight 253 as it descended into Detroit Metro Airport on December 25th.
Three years ago, I took a one hour and 45 minute flight from Denver to Quinter, Kansas. After I made the reservation (and paid for the tickets), I learned that my plane was a 12-seater puddle jumper with no bathroom. For many days before the plane’s departure, I had nightmares about being stuck on a tiny little plane with no access to any bathroom.
And then the day of my flight arrived. As soon as the pilot shut the wee door to the wee plane, I suddenly had to go wee wee. For one-hour and 45 minutes, I did everything within my power to not think about how badly I needed to go. It was horribly unpleasant. And it was also an experience that I will never ever repeat.
Think about the implications of this new law. Practically speaking, it means that on 90-minute flight, there will be no access to the lavatory, period!
Speaking as someone who’s flown on many planes to many places, it’s typically 20-25 minutes into the flight before you’re allowed to “move about the cabin.” And now that the final hour is shaved off the moving around time, that’s pretty much a “sit-down-and-shut-up” arrangement for anyone on a 90-minute flight.
Many years ago, airlines stopped serving olives on their salads - in the hopes of saving money and reducing weight. Next, they ditched in-flight telephones to reduce weight. More recently, in-flight magazines were removed from planes. Now, with this new law, it’ll probably be the restroom that gets removed from these CRJs and Embraers and other commuter planes.
What’s the point of hauling around a lavatory that weighs a few hundred pounds if the passengers will never be allowed out of their seats?
It’s enough to scare the &#^% out of someone.
Merry Christmas from Teddy the Dog!
Teddy has been with us for one year now, and we’ve hit a few bumps along the way, but she’s turned out to be a delightful little dog. And at 30 pounds, she’s not so little anymore. She’s a very sweet and polite dog, and even tolerant of being asked to sit in a little red wagon for a Christmas photo. 
Speaking of good gifts, check out this one.
Teddy the Dog hopes you have a good Christmas
New government regulations state that airlines will be subject to $27,500 per head fine if passengers are trapped in the airplane for more than three hours after boarding.
We’re treated more like cattle these days when we fly “the friendly skies” so it seems fitting that penalties assessed against airlines would be billed “per head.” However, there’s one problem with this $27,500 per head fine. The money goes to the government.
When I read that the airlines would be fined $27,500, I thought “Thank goodness that the poor passenger will finally get some financial compensation for being held captive - against their will - on an aluminum tube” and then I read the *rest* of the story.
This $27,500 fine is just another way for the government to extract more dollars from the public, because as most folks know, corporations do not pay taxes (or fines, for that matter). The expense is passed along to the consumer. Always.
Get this thing in the air, or else...
In 1918, Standard Oil of Indiana made mail-order history when they placed a $1 million order with Sears Roebuck & Company for 192 Honor-Bilt homes. It was purported to be the largest order in the history of the Sears Modern Homes department. Standard Oil purchased the houses for their refinery workers in Southwestern Illinois.
Of those 192 houses, 156 went to Carlinville, 12 were built in Schoper and 24 were sent to Wood River. Throughout the 1920s, pictures of these homes were prominently featured in the front pages of the Sears Modern Homes catalogs.
Construction of the 156 houses took nine months, not six as expected. The reason? A nationwide shortage of wheat. Charles Fitzgerald, spokesman for Standard Oil and Manager of Houses explained to The Chicago Daily Tribune (November 3, 1919) what happened.
“The company (Standard Oil) purchased a forty acre wheat field and the government would not permit the destruction of the crop,” he said. “On the first home, we were erecting the studding while the harvesters were shocking wheat twenty yards away.”
According to the papers of the day, “smut” was another reason for the wheat shortage. When I first read about smut and the wheat shortage, I imagined a large group of idle field workers, sitting cross-legged in the expansive fields, poring over magazines with pictures of scantily-clad women.
Smut, I later learned, is a particularly nasty fungus that creates black, odious spores and ruins wheat crops. In 1919, smut damaged a large proportion of America’s wheat fields.
And “shocking” was another interesting term. As a city girl, I’d never heard that phrase before. “Wheat shockers” are the field workers who bundle up the wheat.
While doing research for my book The Houses that Sears Built, I read hundreds of newspaper and articles from the early 1900s and learned that there is a wholly different vernacular for that time period. Words have different meaning in different times.
One of the Sears Homes in Wood River, Illinois - part of that $1 million order that Standard Oil placed in the late 1910s. There are 24 of these Sears Homes in a row on 9th Street in Wood River. The 12 Sears Homes built in Schoper, Illinois were torn down in the 1930s.
One year ago today, I adopted a new baby. She was the cutest little thing I’d ever seen. It was not my intention to get a dog at that moment, but I fell completely in love the second I saw the little furry form, sitting in the large yard and looking a little worried about life.
At first, my husband wasn’t too keen on the idea of getting a dog, but in time, he also fell in love with our “Teddy.” In fact, Teddy’s newest problem is a little bit of weight gain. Every time the hubby walks into the kitchen, he gives her a treat. She’s now four pounds too heavy and for a little dog that weighs 25 pounds, that’s a lot.
Unfortunately, with her extra fluff, she really does look like one of the family now.
The baby in Wayne's arms. She was about seven weeks old here.
Our little girl is getting all grown up. She's about one year old here.
Thanksgiving dinner with the family. Teddy especially loved the gravy.
Prior to my divorce, I hadn’t asked anyone out since 1976 when I asked Richie Brooks to be my date for the senior prom. In other words, it had been awhile.
Being thrown back into the dating pool, I had to sink or swim. I learned a lot in a hurry.
For instance, which is better? Dinner or drinks?
In the beginning, I had dinner with my first dates. Bad choice. Too much time and too much money and too many calories. Drinks are better and more affordable and it’s easier to split the tab. I preferred to pay my own way, but - I didn’t argue if he insisted on paying.
Secondly, how do you talk to a guy you just met? It’s easy. Treat him as you’d want to be treated, and don’t ramble on about your ex, your health problems, your flaky skin, your weight or your diet.
Ask questions. Remember, she who asks the questions controls the conversation. Learn about him and his interests, because your goal is to figure out if he’s worthy of a second date.
Next, there’s the good night kiss. Many men will move in for the good-night kiss at the end of the first date. If you’re already feeling like there’s not going to be a second date, avoid the kiss. It just muddies the waters.
When a not-so-great first date was drawing to a close, my preference was to step back and extend my hand for a warm and meaningful handshake. Then I’d say, “Thank you so much for a delightful evening” and walk away quickly. This simple action spared me many awkward “what do we do now” moments.
If he asks for a second date, be honest and straight-forward. If you don’t want a second date, have a ready-made phrase ready for moments such as this. Mine was, “I had a lovely time but I don’t feel like we’re a good match.”
Don’t get mired in an argument over this. If he wants to argue the point, just say, “I’m sorry, but I’m not going to change my mind on this,” and walk away.
If you do want a second date, be clear and forthright. Above all, ignore those so-called “Rules” that tell women to play games in order to snare a man.
Be authentic and be real. Don’t play a part.
In short, treat Mr. First Date the way you’d want to be treated, with honesty and grace and sensitivity and forthrightness and good manners.
When my husband read an early draft of my manuscript on internet dating, he suggested I make a change in the chapter I’d titled, “Rose’s Tidbits and Miscellany.”
“You’ve listed ‘persistence and perseverance’ as two important qualities for successful internet dating,” he said. “I’d put much more emphasis on that, because those are two of the most important qualities.”
He had a point. I’d talked to so many women who’d given up after a dozen dates, and had reconciled themselves to living alone for the rest of their lives. And I’d met also many women who’d found their one true love in less than a dozen dates. But that wasn’t my experience. As the months rolled by and the dates kept coming (and going), I had only two choices: give up or push on. I decided to push on.
Perseverance is a common quality found amongst successful people. It was clear to me that perseverance had been the key to my success as both a freelance writer and self-published author. In 2002, I spent more than two years lobbying (perhaps even hounding) a woman at the Smithsonian to allow me to speak at that prestigious and well-known institution.
Eventually, she said yes and that event - that one-hour talk on Sears Homes - became one of the proudest moments of my career. For four years, I mounted a campaign to get the Wall Street Journal to write an article about my work and my book, The Houses That Sears Built. In Summer 2006, the Wall Street Journal called and asked for an interview. That article appeared on page one, above the fold! Reviewing my successes in those hard-to-succeed-in areas, I reasoned it’d be helpful in the dating world as well. And it was.
On October 29, 1941, Winston Churchill told a gathering of upper school students, “Never, never, in nothing great or small, large or petty, never give in except to convictions of honor and good sense.”
The great statesman’s words apply across the whole spectrum of human effort. If you give up too soon, you’ll be depriving not only yourself of much potential happiness, but some well-deserving and decent man, as well.
My 70th first date (now my husband) tells me that he’s glad I persisted and persevered. So am I.
Want to read more? Buy Rose’s book here.
Old houses were built for another time and another way of life. And back in the day, the overwhelming majority of people died at home in their own beds. Next, they were sent off to the undertaker for embalming, and afterward, they went back “home” for the wake and the visitation.
In my own house, we learned that the owner’s first wife died soon after they moved into their “new” 1925-built home. The wake was held in the spacious living room, in front of the beautiful fireplace. This was not unusual for that time. Sometime in the early years of the 20th Century, wakes and visitation moved out of the home and into funeral parlors.
In the mid-1800s, many two-story homes were actually designed to accommodate the problem of moving a heavy coffin from the second floor (where the bedrooms were located) to the first floor. Dignity in death is something the Victorians did very well. Because of this, the coffin was carried upstairs to the deceased, rather than the deceased being carried downstairs to the coffin. Logistically, this made things a little more difficult.
To accommodate this occasional need, the staircases in older houses were built with a coffin-width space between the railings on the staircase and the second-floor hallway. Think of the staircase railing going up the stairs as point A, and the staircase railing on the landing as point B, and the staircase railing along the upper hallway as Point C. Points A, B and C formed three of four sides of a rectangle (see picture below).
With ropes and a couple strong men, the coffin could easily be lowered over the railing and down to the first floor without trying to navigate the twists and turns and 24 steps of an old staircase.
I’ve included a picture of my own staircase until I can find a better picture of a real 19th Century house. My house has a “make-believe” niche that demonstrates the concept, but it is too narrow to be used for anything as wide as a coffin. As soon as I can get into an older house, I’ll upload better pictures.
When I tour older houses, I love showing the homeowners this interesting feature of their intricate staircase balustrade. They’re always taken aback and always pleased to learn a little something more of their home’s history!
A view of my staircase from the first floor
Dr. Joseph Lister - a 19th Century physician - is largely responsible for the bungalow craze, but that’s one tidbit that I’ve never seen in my books on architectural history. The fact is, Joseph Lister and his germ theory dramatically changed the way Americans thought about their homes.
For so many years, mothers could only watch in helpless horror as their young children died from any one of a myriad of “common” diseases. And then in the late 1800s, Dr. Joseph Lister discovered that germs were culprit. Mothers and fathers, weary of burying their infants, had a new arch enemy: household dirt. As is explained in the 1908 book, Household Discoveries and Mrs. Curtis’ Cook-Book:
Not many years ago disease was most often deemed the act of Providence as a chastening or visitation for moral evil. Many diseases are now known to be merely human ignorance and uncleanliness. The sins for which humanity suffers are violations of the laws of sanitation and hygiene, or simply the one great law of absolute sanitary cleanliness… Every symptom of preventable disease and communicable disease…should suggest the question: “Is the cause of this illness an unsanitary condition within my control?”
Now that the enemy had been identified, modern women attacked it with every tool in their arsenal. Keeping a house clean was far more than a matter of mere pride: The well-being, nay, the very life of one’s child might depend upon a home’s cleanliness. What mother wanted to sit at the bedside of their sick child, tenderly wiping his fevered brow and pondering the awful question: “Was the cause of this illness an unsanitary condition within my control?”
Because of Dr. Lister and his germ theory, the ostentatious, dust-bunny-collecting Queen Anne, with its ornate woodwork, fretwork and gingerbread fell from favor with a resounding thud.
Simplicity, harmony and durability are the keynotes of the modern tendency. The general intention seems to be to avoid everything that is superfluous; everything that has a tendency to catch and hold dust or dirt. Wooden bedsteads are being replaced by iron or brass; stuffed and upholstered furniture by articles of plain wood and leather. Bric-a-brac, flounces, valances and all other superfluous articles are much less fashionable (from Household Discoveries and Mrs. Curtis’ Cook-Book).
Remember the movie “It’s A Wonderful Life”? There’s a 1920s scene where George Baily and his girlfriend pause in front of the massive Second Empire house. It sits abandoned and empty, deteriorating day by day. This was not an uncommon fate for Victorian manses in post-germ theory America. Who knew what germs lay in wait within its hard-to-clean walls?
The February 1911 Ladies’ Home Journal was devoted to the new housing style: Bungalows. One headline said, “The Bungalow, because of its easy housekeeping possibilities is becoming more popular every year.
And all because of Dr. Lister.
(By the way, Dr. Lister did not invent the popular mouthwash but it was named after him and his discoveries.)
Today’s headlines report that Roy Disney, Jr. died 16 December (yesterday) at 79 years old. Roy was the namesake of Roy Sr., and the nephew of the Walt Disney, founder of the Disneyland empire.
In early 2006, I got a phone call from Roy’s cousin, Diane Disney Miller (daughter of Walt), who wanted to know more about the homes her father (Walt Disney) and his brother Roy had built side-by-side on Lyric Avenue near the Disney studios in Silver Lake (Los Angeles area). The homes had been ordered in 1928 from Pacific Ready Cut Homes, a kit home company based in Los Angeles. (Read the full story here.)
The houses were true kit homes, ordered out of a mail-order catalog and shipped to the site via train or truck, and typically arriving in about 12,000 pieces. The kits came with a 75-page instruction book that told you how all those pieces and parts went together.
In 2004, I’d co-authored a book on Pacific Ready Cut Homes and due to a dearth of information on this early 20th Century company, that book made my co-author and I the new experts on this topic. And that’s how Ms. Miller came to call me.
So when I traveled to Los Angeles in June 2006, I had the opportunity to visit the Disney brothers’ kit homes on Lyric Avenue. As was frequently the case, these kit homes had been customized and upgraded when built. This was very common and about 50% of these kit homes were altered to meet individual needs. In more recent years, the houses had been the victim of insensitive remodeling and many original features had been stripped away and/or destroyed. Nonetheless, it was fun to stand in the living room of the old bungalow that Walt Disney and wife Lillian had occupied and feel the remnants of the creative energy that had once permeated those plaster walls.
As I mentioned in a prior posts, writers are the original starving artists and most of us make only a very small income but the benefits are lovely. Were it not for my books on kit homes, I’d never have had the opportunity to find myself chatting on the phone with Walt’s daughter Diane, and standing in the living room of Walt and Roy Disney’s former homes.
Buy Rose’s book on Pacific Ready-cut Homes here.
Read full article from Los Angeles Times here.
An image from the 1925 Pacific Ready Cut Homes catalog
In Pasadena, this Pacific Ready-cut home looks much like it did when built in the early 1920s.
An image from the 1925 Pacific Ready Cut Homes catalog shows how many pieces and parts came with your mail-order house.
1919 Pacific Ready Cut Homes catalog
Image from the 1925 Pacific Ready-cut Homes catalog
The news media is reporting that Oral Roberts passed today, and already countless blogs - those ubiquitous internet personal journals that seem to have absolutely no social filters or editorial double-checking - are already offering extremely negative and vitriolic commentary on the man’s life.
Color me old fashioned, but I think it is wrong to speak ill of the dead, and it also shows a lack of grace and a lack of basic civility. Victorian essayist Henry Drummond once wrote that good manners are the habit of showing “love in the trifles.”
Oral Roberts was just a human being with all the accompanying foibles and follies that go with that condition, but he accomplished a tremendous lot with his life, including founding a major university in Oklahoma. That is a life well lived.
How about we look at the good that he did, instead of examining his mistakes, and hope and pray that someone will do the same for us one day?
In 1975, I could be found tooling around Portsmouth in my 1959 red Cadillac Sedan de Ville. It was a great car with a four-barrel carb, dual exhausts and a powerful V-8 engine and more than 300 horsies under the hood. Or so I told people. When I shared that statistic, people would cock their head a little and look at me funny. (That has happened to me a lot in this life…)
And then I’d tell them that it was a 390-cubic inch engine which produced about 330 horsepower.
Mechanically speaking, one horsepower equals the amount of effort needed to move 33,000 foot-pounds per minute, or (in simpler terms) the ability to lift 33,000 pounds one foot in one minute’s time. When used as a measure for electric motors, one horsepower equals about 746 watts. The term “horsepower” was coined by James Watt. He was an 18th Century genius who is credited with significant innovations to the steam engine, making it useful, affordable and practical. The historians say that Watt’s inventions and innovations transformed America from an agricultural society to an industrial society.
There’s a reason our old expressions developed the way they did. Back in the day, stage coaches often had six horsepower, with the six sinewy animals straining at the reins to pull the carriage down the dirt roads. Or, as in the case of the 1905 advertisement shown below, the most modern concrete mixers of the day had ONE horsepower.
BTW, there’s a significant problem with this advertisement. There’s no legal disclaimer at the bottom that says, “Horsie not included.”
one-horse powered cement mixer
Closer look at the one-horsepower concrete mixer
In 2002, when my long-term marriage ended, I sat down and wrote my four-page mission statement detailing what I wanted in a man. That mission statement said nothing about finding a man who bore a strong resemblance to Santa Claus.
In my previous life (like so many good wives and mothers) I’d spent 20 years “playing” Santa and doing Christmas for others. It was a wife’s job to handle all the organizational details for Christmas. I was the one who ran myself ragged buying things and making things and cooking things. One year, I spent countless hours writing and editing a 130-page memoir, a typewritten manuscript for the kids, filled with memories of their growing up years.
In short, Christmas was a fantastic amount of work. The ex didn’t believe in giving Christmas presents beyond a token gift. I gave a lot and got a little. And so it went for many years. I looked to my left and right and saw many other wives and mothers in the same boat as I was. A woman’s lot in life, I’d decided.
And then, when I was 47 years old, I met my 7oth first date. And then we were engaged. And then came Christmas. I was touched to my core with the number of gifts I received from him. And they were all delightful surprises and thoughtful gifts and beautiful things.
But wait, there was more.
He did the Christmas errands, too. He fetched the tree. He decorated the tree. He purchased fresh wreaths for the house and fancy bows for presents. He handled Christmas cards and bought holiday stamps. It was an amazing thing to behold.
“It makes me very happy to be able to enjoy the holidays with a woman who loves me,” he said when I expressed awe at the gifts and the work and the errand-running. “And this is our first Christmas together. I wanted it to be special.”
Turns out, my 70th first date didn’t just look like Santa. He has St. Nick’s warm heart and generous spirit, too.
The fake St. Nick gazes up at the real Santa with a measure of reverential awe and envy
Recent Comments