by Ken Root
I grew up in the 1950?s in rural Oklahoma. Although the region was settled only fifty years earlier, the thin soil quickly gave way to wind and water erosion. As a result, most farm houses established on homesteaded land, were empty. Weathered shells that marked the boom times and the struggle of the dustbowl and depression. I was born in a house that started in that period but remained occupied into the 1960?s. It was an example of how people began their lives in the simplest shelter and continued to expand their dwelling to the present day.
Our old house had been painted red sometime in the 1920?s but future occupants had never had the money or pride to replenish what sun, rain and dust slowly took away. Initially it had four rooms: front, kitchen and two bedrooms. There was no bath but a path leading to an outhouse with a Sears Roebuck catalog that fulfilled the needs of the family. There was a concrete porch along the front that was made of native sand and just enough cement to hold it together. It had a hundred cracks and flaked off white powder every winter. The eve of the porch faced west, and was about the height of a tall man. It was the best place to sit on a hot afternoon as the breeze and shade allowed some comfort. There was a rickety swing with chains and hooks screwed into the rafters.
As the family grew, there had been several additions put on the house. It had a cellar room with a hinged door in the floor that opened to allow passage down a set of stairs into a dank and dark cellar made out of rock and bricks. It was insulated by the ground enough that the fruit jars didn?t freeze and it was our protection from storms. We often had to wade water to sit on benches in the middle of the night and listen to the sharp cracks of thunder while wondering if it would stand a direct hit by a tornado.
There was a smoke house that looked like it had been built separate but attached to the far northeast corner of the building. The floor was high and it was mostly used for junk storage in my youth. Finally, in between other sections, there was a lean-to porch that had been enclosed so it had a sink where we set the water bucket that was brought in from the well just thirty feet south of the house. The room was not heated so we?d often find a thin film of ice on the water in the early morning. We would crack it with the dipper to drink or make coffee on the stove.
Most noticeable, the house was open. There was no insulation except wallpaper. The ceiling was just lapped boards and the roof was either wood shingles or tar paper depending on the section of the dwelling. Mom would fire up the Maytag washing machine on the back porch in good weather and inside the cellar room on cold or rainy days. It would pop and discharge smoke and fumes into the house but we never seemed to have any problem with carbon monoxide as the air passed on through and left a petroleum smell for a few hours.
When dad got a job and the farm started making a little money on wheat and alfalfa, we bought another house that was a mile away and moved it onto the farm, placing it about fifty feet south of the old red house. Within a year, we had transitioned to the new place that had an indoor bathroom and a second floor on the front half. It was far inferior to housing of today but it was a huge step up from the expanded settler?s shack my parents had occupied since the mid 1940?s.
With my nostalgia fed for another day, I began to think of the expansion of our houses as an expression of our prosperity. We had basic names for rooms but now the real estate agents have renamed most everything. What we called the ?front room? is now a living room or great room. We had a basic porch but now homes have a lanai, a three season room, a patio or a deck. The greatest improvement in our lives was the indoor bathroom with a tub and shower but now we are only satisfied if we have multiple bathrooms on each floor with a walk in closet in the master bath.
When the automobile came along, farmers put it in the barn but realized it was a fire hazard. That was the beginning of the garage as a separate building. Better to burn down something small than have their whole livelihood go up because of that new-fangled replacement for the horse. Now, an attached garage for two or three cars is standard and some create an elaborate structure known as a man cave or garagemahal.
Our houses and barns have produced words that some would find undefinable. ?Shedded? means the piece of equipment was under a roof for all the time it wasn?t in the field. ?Shouse? is a modern word for a functional shop or barn with a portion designated as living quarters.
Air conditioning and insulation have changed everything. We don?t need windows for airflow and cooling. A whole house can be climate controlled so weather is almost totally mitigated as long as the electricity stays on. My family still living in Oklahoma has done away with cellars and the have safe rooms made of concrete on the main floor or have cut a hole in the garage floor and dropped in an emergency shelter with a sliding steel top.
A home today is a statement of our perceived station in life. ?McMansions? have sprung up in towns and on farms. Very functional home designs are attuned to natural surroundings and draw a portion of their energy from renewable sources. There are a lot of people who started their lives in a minimal house and now own one that?s worth a million dollars. Where do we go from here? Is there another advancement future generations can make in their lives that will provide as much improvement in comfort and status? Time will tell.
(The chronology of construction of the old red house was discovered as we tore it down in the summer of 1962. The dimension lumber was all rough sawn native wood. The ceiling had an inch thick layer of fine dust that sifted down into the rooms and always caused my mother to ask how everything could become so dusty when she had just cleaned. The small concrete back porch is the only remaining remnant.)
