Becoming an Adult

After the Final Inspection on the Bobbie Lane house, there was still a lot of work to do, including landscaping.  The front yard was mostly planted in ivy.

When my Dad and Mom went to Mexico on their mission, I remained behind and lived in the new home for the summer while I finished up my last High School class, before heading to BYU in the fall.

After two years at Brigham Young University I went on a mission to Uruguay for the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, for two years.

I returned to BYU following my mission, fell in love with Kathryn McGhie, and we were married May 30, 1972.  Sometime between the wedding in Oakland, California and our reception in San Diego two weeks later I became a bit creative and practiced what I learned from the stone mason, and made a waterfall that spilled over into two fish ponds, in the back yard. 

I didn't have any employment lined up.  My Dad and Mom were back from their mission to Mexico, and had purchased a lot in Modesto, CA, and decided to build a house there, in a development that was in the process of being built.  He invited me and three of my brothers to help him begin building it that summer.  He had an old one bedroom rental in Modesto which he offered for us to live in.  Initially Kathy and I shared it with my Dad and my brother Maynard.  Kathy and I lived in the Living room while they shared the bedroom.  We had to pass through the kitchen and bedroom to get to the one bathroom.  It was an adventure. 

The new home he built in Modesto was much smaller that the Bobbie Lane house.  It was a single story home, three bedrooms, and two bath.  The work must have gone fairly smoothly, as I don't have a lot of memories of the various phases.  One humorous occurrence happened during the framing phase of the job.  After we had nailed together a wall, and raised it, somehow Kathy was asked to hold it up.  Meanwhile the rest of us got called way to consult on some other aspect of the framing.  A while later it occurred to us that Kathy was still holding up the wall, which had not been secured in place.  I got a picture of it.  We laugh about it to this day.

Another memory I have was how impatient we became whenever my mom would change her mind about things after we had framed it, so we would have to take it apart and re-do it.  Once again, we participated on all aspects of construction including framing, plumbing, electrical, HVAC, etc.  One day my Dad sent me to pick up some 20' pipes, which I tied up underneath the car.  On the way back to the job-site I got pulled over by a policeman because he said it was unsafe to drive that way.

At the end of that summer, Kathy and I drove back to Provo, expecting to get a place to rent, and continue with our college education.  But after we arrived, it soon became apparent that for married students to get housing, they had to have it arranged ahead of time.  So we returned to Modesto where we continued to live in the old converted milk house that my dad had offered to us.  We attended Modesto Jr. College, and I continued to work with my Dad on his new home.

My Dad had rented out the converted dairy milk house for decades, and it was in need of some repairs.  I did my first bathroom remodel job on that house.  I remember going to Montgomery Wards and picking out some ceramic tile, and I think they lent me a tile cutter, and I tiled around the bathtub.  I vaguely remember installing a piece of linoleum on the bathroom floor.  Termite damage was discovered in the bottom of the studs, so Dad and I chipped out the stucco, cut off the damaged section of the studs, and scabbed on a new piece of lumber.

Kathy and I both completed our Associates Degrees from Modesto Jr. College in the spring and moved to San Diego in search of a new career.  We lived in the Bobbie Lane Home for a year while we tried to get established.

Learning new skills

Once the Bobbie Lane house was framed, my Dad paired his sons with tradesmen he hired to work on the project.  My brother Don (about age 15) worked with the plumber while I (about age 14) worked with the HVAC (Heating Ventilation and Air Conditioning) tradesman.  I don't remember what aspect of the job Maynard was assigned to, and I think by this time Melvin was already moved away from home.

I remember crawling under the house, hanging the ductwork from the floor joists, securing the ends together with hex head sheet metal screws, and then wrapping them with a thin fiberglass insulation wrap, which was stapled together to hold it in place.

As a part of the septic system, we built a septic tank out of concrete.  It consisted of two chambers, each having a concrete door at the top to allow for pumping out the sludge in the future.  The septic tank was connected to a leech field made up of trenches of gravel with a line of about 4" clay pipe that was gapped between, to allow the effluent liquid enter the rock and evaporate.

Another trade we were exposed to was working with the stone mason.

Working for the FBI, my Dad spent a lot of time in Mexico.  He found a good deal on some stone for his fireplaces and planters, and arranged to have it delivered.  He was unaware that the truck driver would show up on a Sunday morning.  It was very out of character for my dad to expect us to work on Sunday.  But I remember that one Sunday morning he had us put on our work clothes and go help him unload that truck load of stone.   There were lots of rocks on that truck!

Each of us took turns tending the stone mason.  We had to learn to mix the mortar to a consistence of his liking.  This also entailed accurately measuring the sand, plastic cement, lamp black and water into a cement mixer.  We then were tasked with keeping his mortar board loaded with mortar. It was interesting to watch him work.  Like an artist he carefully chose each rock with an eye to where it would look and fit best.  Then after giving the mortar just the right amount of time to firm up, he would clean out the joints between the rocks with a whisk broom.
When it came time to do the electrical, we all pitched in to pull the romex wires between the outlet and switch boxes and the electrical panel.  I remember spending what seemed like hours connecting the neutral and ground wires to the ground bar, and the black and red wires to the circuit breakers.

I think we tried to get involved in the stucco part of the project, but those hod buckets (Definition of HOD 1: a tray or trough that has a pole handle and that is borne on the shoulder for carrying loads (as of mortar or brick)) were just too heavy for me to carry up a ladder without spilling it all over the place.  This was back when they didn't use a pump to spray the scratch and brown coats onto the walls, but rather had to use a hod carrier to place the plaster mixture on a mortar board from which the plasterers picked it up and toweled it onto the walls.  It looked like a lot of hard work, but the house seemed much more complete after the stucco wire was covered with stucco.

My Dad hired a crew to hot mop the roofing.  He also hired a painter to paint the interior, and a flooring contractor to install the linoleum flooring and carpet.  He had the cabinets built and installed by a cabinet professional.  Of course we were there to watch them work, so it was quite educational.  When Mom and Dad finished building this new home, Don and I were finishing our last year of high school and getting ready to head off to college.  My Dad was called to be Mission President of the West Mexico Mission of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints in Hermosillo, Mexico.  My two younger sisters went to Mexico with them.  I made a mental note to myself that their "Dream Home" was built too late for them to enjoy with all their children at home.  When they returned from their mission four years later, they only had my youngest sister living with them in that huge house.  But years later they did enjoy the largeness of the home when their large posterity came to visit!  Before they sold the home on Bobbie Lane they had 6 children with their 6 spouses and 64 grand children, and perhaps 20 great grand children. (When he passed away in August 2011, my Dad had 64 grandchildren and 177 great grandchildren.)

Bobbie Lane House

With the foundation in, we turned our attention to framing the house.  This entailed putting on sill plates which were bolted down with the anchor bolts.  And since it was a crawl-space construction, we had to put in floor joists, which were supported on piers and posts.  Fortunately the man in the house next to where we were building was a contractor and offered to lend my Dad a Skil Saw, otherwise I am certain he would have had us cutting all the lumber with a handsaw.

I don't remember a whole lot about the framing process other than that my brother reminds me when the inspector came out for the framing inspection he would not pass it off because we had nailed down the plywood parallel to the joists instead of perpendicular to the joists.  My Dad's solution to this setback was to put down another layer of plywood running in the correct direction.  Of course we hand nailed all the plywood with hammers (there were no pneumatic nail guns back then.  We did all the framing with hammer and nail.)  But it was a lot easier than if we would have had to pull out all the nails (with a Cat's Paw) in the thousands of square feet of plywood already down, then quarter turn each sheet and re-nail it.

Eventually the framing was complete when we finished nailing down the plywood for the roof.  We would soon be introduced to new skills besides swinging a hammer.

Our New Home

Our New Home

On New Years Eve 2013 my wife and I spent the night in our new home, which was many years in the making.

I have been around construction much of my life.  My earliest memory is of having breakfast on a stack of button board when I was three years old.  My dad was in the process of having a home built, and he was working along with the contractor so he could save on construction costs and build a larger home that would include an additional family room, bedroom, and bathroom.

When I was about 11 years old my parents decided that our family of two parents and six children had out grown that four bedroom / two bathroom home.  They had an architect friend who designed for them a very spacious house to build.  It consisted of a very large living room, large family room, spacious kitchen, four over sized bedrooms (compared to today's standards) in addition to a massive master bedroom suite.  There was a generous game room in what could be called a basement, but in California we don't have basements.  When I was 12 we began construction.  My dad believed in teaching his children to work, so he had us on the project working alongside him and other tradesmen as the endeavor progressed.

It was a major undertaking, especially since my dad was working a full time job as an FBI agent.  We worked on the house evenings and Saturdays.  Being members of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, working Sundays was taboo.  But my dad had nothing against working late into the evenings with the aid of work lights.

My first memories of what became know as the "Bobbie Lane" house was helping my dad survey the land.  He would look through a transit and have us take turns holding a pole with a measuring stick attached.  By recording the readings he created a topographical map of the lot, which was essential in laying out the placement of the house, driveway, septic system, etc.  The next step I remember was doing percolation tests for the design of the septic system.  Then came the Bulldozer.  I remember being amazed to learn that the operator made $60 per hour.  That was one dollar per minute!  To a 12 year old in 1962 that seemed like an awesome income.  The Caterpillar operator cut in a driveway, then cut in a pad near the top of the lot for the actual building site.  There was an amazing view from there all the way out to the Coronado peninsula.

After the grading was complete, footings were dug with a backhoe.  (I don't think my Dad operated it).  I remember helping tie the forms together so they would not spread when filled with concrete.  The concrete walls at the back of the house were quite tall, perhaps 8 feet in areas.  When the forms were in place, a crew of perhaps 6 or more men came and did the concrete work.  Our job was to insert the foundation bolts in place.  I remember how difficult that task became when the concrete began setting up.  After the foundation was in place, the actual framing could begin.