Eborn Home on Lanark Lane - 1947 and 1981 Editions

This is my first attempt at blogging.  Struggled with the pictures a bit, but hope this will be interesting to future readers.   I stayed home from school the day the house was moved to its present location.  It was origanilly located a half mile or more up in the fields West of Melvin and Leo Passey homes and was know as the "Bunn" home.  Dad paid $500.00 for it but had to have it moved.  He bought it near the end of World War II and it took him a while to figure out how to get it moved.  It cost him about as much to get moved as he paid for the house.  It had not been lived in for many years and was in pretty bad shape.  Mom and Dad had drawn up plans to build a home but materials were difficult to come up with because of the war and one day Dad came home and announced he had bought this home.   I don't remember mom objecting.

The company employed to move the home was from the Preston Idaho area.   They jacked the home up high enough to back a trailer under it and started down through the fields.  The picture shows it on the road just North of the Irwin Parker home, I believe.  From that point they went down through the fields and around behind the Jim and Lareva Findley home and placed the home on a foundation that consisted of two cement walls on the East and West sides of the home.   I have often wondered why it was necessary to go through the fields but just don't remember.  Perhaps there were electrical wires in the way but I just don't  remember.  Trenches about three feet wide had been dug to a depth that would hopefully accomadate a basement someday.  It was no small task to build forms and pour cement  for the walls.  No cement trucks were available.   Everything was all done with the most basic of tools, such as a wheel barrel , a pick and shovel. and a hammer.  Supports were placed under the middle of the house to keep it from settling.

I don't remember much about cleaning the house and moving in but that process was started soon after the home was moved onto the foundation.   It was a daunting task to provide heating, electrical, paint and wall paper inside. Linoleum was installed on all the floors, temporary steps were built, windows replaced and a new phase of life began for the Eborn Clan.   Every thing was done by family and friends who generally did not have many construction skills..   No money for hiring anything done.  It was hard, slow going all the way.  I am amazed sometimes at the ability of Dad and others to figure out how to do things and pick up a shovel or a hammer and go to work providing for their family, maybe not in a manner that we are accustomed to in this day and age, but the very best they could with the skills they had and money available.

The home as pictured on the truck is a view of the rear of the home.  It had an open porch across the front which Dad modified to enlarge the front room and later enclosed the rest of the porch as it is now.  Later an enclosed porch was added on the rear.  An indoor bathroom was built a couple of years later, if my memory is correct, which made life in Bear Lake much easier.   Imagine sometime having to go out in the cold every time someone needed to use the out-house - night or day.  Even the poorest of todays society likely has more comforts than existed with our family in those early years.

It took a number of years to dig out the basement and complete the foundation on the front and rear.  I remember as a 10-12 year old kid coming home from school every night and working on digging out the dirt from under the house.  Dad had an old horse, I think named "Old Flax", that he hooked up to a scraper.  The scraper was about four feet wide and had a handle on it to allow it to be dumped.  My job was to fill that scraper each night.   All the dirt had to be removed with a pick and a shovel and then was taken out and dumped as fill dirt between the road and the house.   The basement floor was added several years later.

There was a lot of sacrifice, sweat and aching muscles that went into making the home as it is today and for us, as the children of Darrell and Edna, a pleasant place to live.  We never went hungry,  went without clothes or  suffered because of the elements, except maybe on some hurry-up trips to the out-house.   The lessons we learned were many.

I am sure there are other memories that each of you have of those years.  I have attempted to shed some light on the events surrounding the origin of the home where we grew up.   If you have additional insights please comment.

Ellis