gram: house detective

We've been wondering about our house for a while now. We heard from some neighbors who have lived in their house since 1926 (!) that there used to be a pond where the oasis is now. We heard from another neighbor that her house used to be the town stable; she even showed us the stone mounting blocks that are still in place (and, yes, in case you were wondering, she actually remembers this; she didn't just hear it from someone). At the messy party, one of the parents told us that she could remember playing in our house as a kid. Then she dropped a real bombshell: our house, she said, used to be a barn. She told us that a family bought the place in the 1980s and converted it into a house.


But how can that be? we asked ourselves. Our house was built in 1915, and the way the rooms are set up, there's no way that it could have been a barn. I thought maybe my grandpa would be a good resource. He's lived here all his life, and his sister used to live just one street over from where we are now. We thought surely he would remember something about this place. Sadly, he didn't. He did tell us that the house wasn't a barn -- the barn was down the road a couple of houses, where there is a school now, so I'm not sure what the parent at the messy party was talking about.


Enter Gram. She ran into my neighbor one day (the one who has lived around the corner since 1926) and they got to talking about it. The neighbor remembered the name of the boy who lived here during her childhood in the 1930s. And, in the beautiful way of small towns, it turns out that Gram goes to exercise classes with the wife of that man.


Amazing, right? But it gets better. Gram's exercise buddy brought her a surprise last week: pictures of our house from the 1930s! We're so excited to have these, and to be able to trace some of the history of the place. There were even pictures of the pond (conveniently, all of the pictures had been marked a very long time ago with the name of the man and with the address). It turns out that one of the neighbor kids may or may not have nearly drowned in the pond; regardless, the neighbor kid's father threatened to sue the family who lived here if they didn't fill in the pond, so the pond was filled in. Somewhere along the line, the rock wall disappeared too, although Mike keeps finding remnants of it every time he digs a hole. We like the oasis as it is now, but maybe someday we'll have our own stone wall.