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Bertha Evelyn Richards and John Milton Phillips were married in 1908 after a romantic courtship that took Dad to Tenafly, New Jersey where Mom lived with Aunt Ella Lounsbury. Soon after marriage, they moved into the colonial home of Dad's parents in Norfolk, Virginia. Dad's father, William Phillips, owned a farm on land that later became Algonquin Park. Mom and Dad lived with Dad's parents until his father died and the estate was sold and divided among the four Phillips' children: Aunt Nora Edwards, Uncle Will, Uncle Eddy, and Dad. Visiting the area some fourteen years later, I remember the respect with which we were greeted by former tenants of the Phillips' farm.
In 1909, Dad was fortunate enough to acquire the home you see pictured here, along with twenty acres of prime farmland. The farm had a dairy barn and a number of sheds and outbuildings, all in a state of poor repair. The house itself had brick walls about 18" thick. The plaster was applied directly to the bricks and the moisture would seep through the walls and cause the plaster to fall. Each of its four rooms had a fireplace. But the fireplaces had been sealed at some former time when stoves came into use. The outside wall of the living room had a closet on each side of the fireplace and the whole outer wall was beautifully paneled with wide, virgin pine boards. The floors throughout were wide pine boards. Mother kept them covered with Oriental rugs inherited from Aunt Ella. The house was without plumbing. Also, we used kerosene lamps as the only source of light. They tended to smoke and the smutty globes required daily cleaning. Not shown in the picture is a colonial brick dependency just thirty feet east of the house. In colonial times, the dependency was occupied by slaves. There were iron bars in the basement windows to confine unruly slaves. Aunt Mary and Johnson lived in the dependency during my time.
Living in a house with no water was no big deal in the summer. We had a pitcher pump on the back porch to wash our hands and face and get a drink. And we had a #3 galvanized tub I would place in the backyard and fill with water in the morning. During the day the sun would warm the water, and I could take a good bath in the evening. Privacy was no particular problem for me, but it did pose a problem for my parents. In the winter, keeping clean was not so easy. But, the warm air from the downstairs stove would accumulate in the upstairs hall, and here again the galvanized tub came into play. We heated our water on a teakettle that remained ever present on the wood stove. Most of the time we were able to use the outside privy in the chicken yard. But, it was no fun to light a lantern and journey out into the chicken yard to the privy on a cold, windy night. Needless to say, we trained nature's needs to avoid this situation as much as possible.
This little anecdote is somewhat out of context. But, the cedar tree in the picture at the head of this page brings it to mind. It was a cold wintry Saturday afternoon. Mom and Dad had gone to the city market to purchase coffee, sugar, flour, and the like. I took the occasion to take my Saturday afternoon bath. It had just snowed and I felt it was a good time to stay home. I had stripped to the bare skin and was about to get into the galvanized tub when a strange urge came over me. Wouldn't it be fun to rush outdoors and roll in the snow? I ran outdoors and with glee, plunged into the snow, made two or three rolls, and shocked by the cold quickly made my way back to the house. The door had LOCKED behind me. There I stood shivering in disbelief. What could I do. All of the downstairs windows were locked and chinked to keep the heat in. Then the cedar tree came to mind. It overhung the roof of the front porch just a little. If I could climb the tree, perhaps I could get on the porch roof and enter the upstairs window. So naked and now almost numb with cold, I managed to shimmy up the cedar tree trunk, and precariously climbed out on the icy limb - then onto the porch roof. Happily the window was unlocked and I climbed through and made my way to the waiting tub of warm water. I was embarrassed about the episode and never told my parents.
I dreamed about it last night. The downstairs ceilings were quite high. A stairway in the living room rose to a landing, made a turn, and ascended to the upstairs hall. The stairway was guarded by a beautifully carved banister. And, part way up the stairs, the banister was marred a large cleft, as though made by a sword. I often wondered if it was struck by a soldier in a fight, or the result of some drunk in a rage. There had to be a lot of history in this old house.
Time exacts its toll on old houses as well as old people. And, there were insufficient funds to do essential maintenance. The cedar shake roof had deteriorated with age, and green moss covered the roof. It leaked badly in prolonged rains, and we had to put pots and pans all over the upstairs floor. The ceiling plaster could not stand the constant water, and patches came loose here and there. One day we heard a crash upstairs and found a large section had collapsed on our bed. Something had to be done. Dad engaged Mr. Tom Doughty to help, and they removed all the old cedar shakes and installed a five-V metal roof. That took care of the leaks but much damage had been done.
The Wisteria vines that shrouded the front porch kept it from drying properly after rains, and the floor collapsed in spots. Dad had to remove the beautiful vines and rebuild the entire front porch. It was some task and occurred when I was about three years old. I remember because our man, Johnson, helped do the job, and he paused to entertain me by poking holes in the pile of building sand.
There were two large downstairs rooms in the brick section of the house. A wooden wing was added in the back to form a Tee. The wooden wing contained our dining room and kitchen. It was unheated except for the kitchen oil stove, and was brutally cold in the winter. We bundled up for winter meals, and they were short. Often we would take a plate to the living room. The living room contained the only heat stove in the house. In the center of the room, we kept a reading table a kerosene lamp. A wood box was placed near the stove. It was my job to keep the wood box supplied. The other downstairs room was known as the "Other Room" and it was unsuitable for habitation. The massive girders had rotted away at the brick wall and the floor had settled several inches to the ground. We used this room as a pantry of sorts and to store things. It was always cool. At one time, we grew Gladioli for the local florists, and Dad would store Gladioli flowers in it overnight. We never had the funds to rebuild a new floor.
Our dining room had clapboard siding on the exterior and tongue and groove inner sheathing. Right by the window, the honeybees formed an active hive. The bees were busy, the hive was prosperous, and quite a bit of honey accumulated. Occasionally a bee or two would find their way into the dining room. We decided enough was enough. (We had regular beehives in the chicken yard.) Dad decided to remove the hive and the honey. I assisted as we removed several of the outside clapboards to reveal the honeycombs. The bees resented our intrusion, to say the least, and I was stung seven times. The honey was good, but I missed the entertainment of the bees.
Out of the blue a storm came up. I sat huddled on the living room cot. The wind velocity kept increasing, and soon the sound was deafening. I drew up in a ball and was terrified. The wind subsided in a minute or so, and I opened the door to the dining room. It was no more. The entire wooden wing of our house had been wrenched from its foundation and displaced perhaps ten feet downhill. Mother's lovely china press lay in ruins and the majority of her nice china was in fragments. The sturdy smokehouse that brother Elbert and I built had been picked up and deposited in our fig grove against Aunt Mary's house, never to be put back where it belonged. Trees around were in splinters. Uncle Payne Edwards, the husband of Dad's sister, Nora, came out with house jacks and helped get the dining room back in place. Uncle Payne was a fine man, a carpenter by trade, and he and Aunt Nora visited us frequently. He would play checkers with me while at the same time playing bridge with Dad, Mom, and Aunt Nora.
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