The following was written by my late wife Elaine. She wrote a long book, a diary really, from which this is one passage:
Building the New House
We all pitched in to do whatever we each could do to help every day. One job I worked on was pounding off the old dried-on mud, as hard as cement, which held bricks together at the old Sweet Chalybeate Hotel near Sweet Springs; Dave bought the bricks for 10 cents each, and they were used for the fireplace wall in the living room. We found animal footprints and a few shiny glazed patches in the ancient bricks, and Dave placed those sides of the bricks where they would show up in the wall. There are pictures of all of us as we worked on our new house that summer.
The Guardian Angel
On the hottest days we stayed in the valley, then drove up the steep and rocky road to the house site in the evenings to sweep and clean up the building debris. We experienced two moonrises every evening: one in the valley and one at the top, a few minutes later. One evening I was sweeping “the platform,” and I always sweep backwards (doesn’t everybody?), brooming the sawdust along with me, while I walked backwards. Something made me suddenly stop, just before I would have fallen into the opening cut in the floor for the future stairway downstairs. If it wasn’t because I sensed a draft coming up through the opening, which I wasn’t aware of, then it was a guardian angel. I’ll never know for sure. But I didn’t fall in, and I never swept close to the opening again! (I’m sure it was an angel.) Don’t mean to make light of a serious and dangerous situation, but maybe it was an angel named Draft.
On hot afternoons, sometimes we walked to our cave (“Argobrite”– it’s in all the West Virginia caving books). Cold air rushes out, and sometimes we’d sit at a distance from the entrance where it felt comfortable. So it’s a natural air conditioning source in the summer, and since it’s 55 degrees year-round, it’s also a natural heat source in the winter. If somebody built a home near the cave entrance, they could take advantage of the constant temperature for their heating/cooling systems.
To be continued…
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About the Author: RD Blakeslee is a nonagenarian in West Virginia who built his net worth by only investing in that which can be enjoyed during acquisition and throughout life, as opposed to papers in a drawer, like stocks and bonds. You can read more about him here.
Photos: Courtesy of the Blakeslee Family
“If somebody built a home near the cave entrance, they could take advantage of the constant temperature for their heating/cooling systems.” – Elaine
Frank Lloyd Wright built a world-famous house, “Fallingwater”, directly over a stream similar to Argobrite’s: https://www.archdaily.com/60022/ad-classics-fallingwater-frank-lloyd-wright
Note the picture of an interior stairway, where Wright suspended the outer edge of the stair treads from the railing with two rods per tread extending through the treads, as did Grandfather:
https://lenpenzo.com/blog/id46608-grandfather-says-grandfathers-house-and-custom-built-stairs-2.html
Your taller son is standing just like his dad. I hope that your family is still close.
Thanks for sharing.
Bill, Taller son Jonathan has stayed in the area ever since we moved here in1977, when he was in high school. We get together often and he helps me with tasks I cannot do any more.
He has become wealthy with rental real estate (an accomplishment contrary to the usual “progressive” poor mouthing of West Virginia life) and we share interest in his cattle herd, a successor to mine. I recently bought him a bull from the herd where I sold my cattle years ago, to reinforce valuable genetic traits.
Other offspring living away (and their offspring) are in regular email and telephone communication and visit here several times a year.
I cannot travel anymore and their ministrations are the kind of blessings that “Grandfather Says” has bee applauding for years.
I’m glad your family is still close.
I am listening to old music from my youth. Did you and Miss Elaine listen to The Big Bopper?
No – We just occasionally turned on our car’s AM radio in Detroit in the 1950s. Popular stuff like “Maresydoats”