Unique Device
The house that I remember vividly, as my childhood home, was constructed in
Richland in 1954. Our parents searched for the perfect floor plan for months,
and when they made their decision, engaged an architect from Columbus. He was
constructing a home for the Mayo family, which was within the same country
block, and because he was contracted in the area, he willingly negotiated the
charges. Daddy and his brother, my Uncle Bill, were providing their expertise;
the house was considered both fashionable and ultra-modern in design.
Finished in red brick, it sits far from the road, atop a small slope, with an
expansive lawn, and an elongated paved driveway. The walls are plaster and to
this day, have few visible fractures. Daddy vows that workmanship is just as
important as quality materials; the infrastructure of the house will probably
decompose long before the façade crumbles.
There are three bedrooms, two bathrooms; the galley style kitchen is adjacent to
a formal living and dining room, and an enclosed stairway gives access to the
basement. The screened side porch opens off the dining room and provides added
floor space for entertaining. The floors upstairs are polished pine, and the
baths are surrounded in exclusive ceramic tile. The center hallway includes a
coat closet, separate storage for linens, and a pull-down stairway access to a
finished attic. When we were young, the stick to the stairway always
disappeared before Thanksgiving and reappeared right after Christmas. We
enjoyed a central heating and cooling system long before it became an expected
convenience.
The floor space in the family bath is limited, and they faced the challenge of
how to manage large quantities of dirty laundry. One wall in the large bathroom
was designed with cabinets complete with doors, so daddy developed an innovative
way to transport items from the main floor to the laundry area, situated in the
basement.
His redesigned cabinetry created a secret access way to the basement; we opened
the door, dropped laundry down the chute, and it landed in a basket near the
washing machine. The novel idea became a point of pride; no home in our
community had such an advantageous contraption.
Our parents cautioned us youngsters frequently about using the mechanism for
transporting anything other than dirty clothes. To my knowledge the only living
thing that was ever transported in the chute was one of mamma's precious Siamese
kittens.
According to family legend, the unfortunate incident would have never happened
if Troy and Steve Woods hadn't been visiting with my brother David.
