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viviti

The Old House After Sitting In Humble, Texas For 42 Years


The Country Wasn't Like I Remembered,
But Then Again, I was Only A Year Old
When We Moved Away To Houston



start stop
"I'll Take You Home
Again Kathleen"

Moving, I Mean Everything
Including The Kitchen Sink

It was almost midnight and we were driving west on the North Belt crossing over the Hardy Toll Road and I 45 at 40 miles per hour. There must have been at least 50 cars filling the three lanes behind us. In front of us were two big winch trucks, with revolving yellow lights on their roofs, following the Nantucket Blue house that blocked all 3 lanes.

I can tell you now, that not all of the big ones we have survived occurred between 1929 and 1945. The really "Biggest One" for Nellie and I happened last night. We have lived in the same house in the same subdivision, in the Humble area, for 42 years. Then we both went crazy as Bessie Bugs and decided to move to the country. . . house and all. Nellie said she wanted to move, but only if she could still wake up in her old bedroom every morning and sit on her couch looking out her old living room window while drinking her morning coffee. Of course, watching the cows in Menke's pasture isn't the same as watching the school bus picking up the kids who lived across the street.

The crew from the Cherry House Moving Company arrived at 10:00 AM Monday morning and started jacking up the house. Finally by Wednesday afternoon, all the utilities were disconnected and they had the house setting on some huge steel beams with wheels attached and ready to pull out of the yard. The beams were attached to a huge Autocar diesel truck. Man, that truck was so big that the air filter sitting on the right front fender was bigger then the V6 engine in my car. Nellie and I and daughter Valerie arrived about 8:00 PM and were sitting in the car waiting (translated, napping) when the 2 big winch trucks drove up with the moving crews about 10:00 PM. We were soon joined by a policeman in a pickup truck with a roof full of flashing red lights. The crew hung yellow flashing down both sides of the house and stuck one on the rear. They were finally ready and the house started moving out into the street about 11:00 PM on it's journey to Pine Island, Texas.

The first 5 ½ blocks to get out of the neighborhood to Lee Road took us 30 minutes. The crew had to pull up every mail box post for 3 blocks along Townsand Street, then reset them as the house moved past. The parade turned south on Lee Road, then west on Greens Road with my car bringing up the rear, emergency lights blinking. We turned south again at Aldine Westfield Road and west again at Beltway 8. I'll shorten the story by saying Beltway 8 to Veterans Memorial Drive to FM 1960 to Kuykendall to FM 2920 to Hwy. 290 to Prairie View and south across old 290 into Pine Island. They had the house in position and parked at 3:30 AM Thursday morning. The crew left here about 4:00 AM to go back to Houston and Nellie and I went into the week end house and raced each other to the bed.

Friday Morning, the crew arrived and started placing the concrete blocks in position to set the house down on. They also replaced some bad timber in the foundation. They pulled the dollies (wheels) out from under the beams after blocking under them with some big "eight by" timbers. They came back Monday morning and finished setting the house on the blocks and pulled the 2 huge 60 foot long and 6 smaller 24 and 26 feet steel beams out from under the house.

. I did want to make a comment here that Cherry House Moving Company's 3 man crew, Bracey, Sam and Roy was the best coordinated crew I've every seen. I watched them work together almost all day for 3 days lifting the house and 2 days setting it back down and never heard a cross word or an order given. Each man knew what needed to be done and did it without orders or complaint.

We Are Country Folk


In Pine Island After About 6 Months

Other then a little cracked sheetrock, the 42 year old house with all our belongings inside, made the trip well. By the way, you never level, move or even let a house on blocks grow old in the Houston area without some sheetrock cracking, With that knowledge I already had a sheetrock repair man lined up

Some plumbing under the house had to be cut out to make way for the beams, but that too was expected. The big question most people wonder about is whether moving your present house is a financially sound option. There is no way that I could have sold the house where it was for enough money to build anything even close to it in size or convenience. I have at least 3 different people that want to buy the 2 lots for $2,000 more then the move cost. This would give us enough extra to make any needed repairs.

Well, now it's Friday and our home of 42 years is sitting over there, glaring at us. I think it's upset because it doesn't have any electrical power, gas for the kitchen stove and central heat, the air conditioning isn't hooked up, no refrigerator, no water yet and no sewerage disposal even if we had water, no telephone or television antenna or dish.

I guess it must have been this way when great grandpa William Jonas Milam and great grandma Mary Jane Garrett built their house about a hundred yards northeast of here in 1898. Both sets of my maternal great grandparents settled in the Pine Island area in the 1890's (The Penningtons made it in 1892.)

The closest great grandpa's house ever came to the modern conveniences we find it so hard to live without, was a kerosene lamp, a bucket of water in the kitchen, a pile of stove wood near the back door and an outhouse out back. Oh yes, least I forget they didn't have a refrigerator either, but they buried eggs in a crock under the house to keep cool and kept milk and butter in fruit jars in the cool water down at the creek.

Before I close, I'm sure all of you already know that Pine Island is a small community 45 miles west of Houston, half way between Waller and Hempstead. Actually Pine Island is incorporated. A city, about 2% in fact and 98% in peoples minds where most "lots" are from 40 to a few hundred acres. Some years back, the city of Prairie View jumped across Business 290 and annexed a large area south of the highway. It was enough however to scare the daylights out of the people further south and the City of Pine Island was born.

Hooking Up To The Necessary

I mentioned great grandpa's outhouse in a past column. Well, I'll have to tell you now that I almost considered putting an outhouse in my little "Poverty Acres" section of Pine Island when I discovered how much money it would cost to install the new "Sewerage Disposal System." If the state regulations get much tougher it'll be cheaper to start sealing all our wastes in old five gallon paint buckets and ship it to the Grand Canyon.

They really know how to spread your money around in Waller County (that actually translates to the State of Texas.). In order to install a "Septic System" you first have to hire an engineer to come out, dig a post hole in order to check the composition and colors of the soil so he can draw a design for the system. That's $200 gone. Then you have to go to the county with his design to obtain the permit. That's $210 more dollars gone. Next you have to take a sworn affidavit stating that you will properly maintain the system, to the County Clerk's office. $9 more gone for the filing fee. Then you can have the $4,500 aerobic waste system installed so you can meet the new state laws and have it sprinkle your lawn every day with recycled tee tee.

A conventional system would have the same preliminary costs, but the system itself would only cost $3,000. Oh yes, least I forget, that was just for starters. After my system is installed I'll be required to have a maintenance contract with a company that checks the system every 3 months for the rest of your life. That's another $100 or $150 a year plus the cost of replacing any of the pumps, switches, sprinklers and assorted parts that will eventually go bad. If all that sounds bad, there is still another small cost. The home owner has to buy chlorine tablets and drop them in the chlorinater every so often. So that's $5,000 down and so much a year for the rest of your life just to use the bathroom. Almost makes you want to quit eating and drinking. Of course you could always bootleg your own system in and pay the fines and serve the time when they catch you. County inspectors are always riding the roads and looking for fresh dirt in peoples yards.

That reminds me of my uncle Wendell's 100 acre pasture back over on Brumlow Road. Some years back he built a barbed wire cross fence across the pasture. A few weeks later, he had a visit from a U.S. Department of Agriculture agent with the question, "Why did you build the fence, Mr Phillips?" After explaining it was to alternate the cows between the 2 pastures, the agent ask if he was going to plant anything in the newly fenced section. After saying no, uncle Wendell ask the agent how he knew about the new fence. "It's easy," he replied, 'we take aerial photos every so often and then compare them with the one from before to make sure no one plants something that they don't have an allotment for." That almost makes me scared to plant a garden. It also makes me wonder if there is a sewer airplane flying around, looking for fresh dug trenches near houses.

Things Move Slow In The Country

The Waller County Butane company delivered the new 250 gallon propane tank this morning. It's a small item, only six hundred and something. Of course, when he comes back later to fill it, that will be another couple of hundred dollars.

Luckily we had a new well drilled a couple of years ago that will supply both houses or we would have to scratch for another three or four thousand dollars to have a new well drilled. I am not writing all this just to cry on your shoulders. I just wanted to let everyone, who is dreaming about moving to the country, know that there is an expensive down side. If you want to build a new house or have one moved in, on an unimproved piece of land, you should expect to spend between ten and fifteen thousand dollars for all the little extras that you have to have.

Now it's been three weeks and we are still n the little house. A representative from HL&P came out Monday and staked the location for the new poles to bring electricity to the house. More proof of hurry up and wait. She said the construction crew ought to be out to install the poles and wires in a couple of weeks or so. We are well into the week of the twenty second (Wednesday) and no sewerage system contractor so far. As I said before if you are in a hurry to get work done up here, you are in the wrong place.

The electrician (a friend who lives in the second house down the road) has moved the meter hub and weather head to the correct side of the house and a new breaker box installed, but not completely hooked up yet. He promised he'll be back in the next day or two to finish. Now if he sounds faster then most, uh uh. We have been trying for over a year to get him to Humble to basically do the same job. Sometimes I wonder if we moved the house up here just to get him to work on the house a little faster.

It appears that the newly opened freeway section of Hwy. 290 around Waller, Prairie View and Hempstead has signaled the citizens of Houston that it's time to move west to a nearby part of the country that is virtually untouched by Houston's commuters. The representative from HL&P said they are getting swamped with new services and running weeks behind. We also noticed that land prices in the Waller/Hempstead area are beginning a rapid climb. So if y'all are thinking about moving to the country, hurry up.

Hurrah, We are Back In The Blue House

Once again we are living in the house that we had moved from Humble to Pine Island. We now have lights, cold water, hot water, propane gas for the kitchen range and water heater, central air conditioning and a sewer system that sprays treated tee tee water on the lawn about once a day.

Lawn, ha ha, we have about 6 patches of St Augustine grass about 4 to 6 feet across for the whole 2 acres of what we laughing call the yard. What do you know about Bahaia Grass. Each plant sends up a seed stalk about 1 feet high within approximately 3 days after the last cutting. The seed stalk ends in 2 seed covered stems about 2 inches long in a V shape. I think it's the plants way of saying "V for Victory over the mower." So I jump on the little Massy Ferguson tractor with the 4 foot finish mower on the back and spend a half a day cutting the 2 acres. If I waited 2 weeks, I would have to run the tractor in 1st gear and it would take twice as long to cut.

Things Move Even Slower In The Country

The only thing we like now is central heat. Of course we won't need it until December or so. Our hope is however, that we will have the central heat furnace converted to propane by then. The propane man is going to do that job. Or was that sentence really a question? Lets see, he wrote the model numbers down back in March to order the parts. Surely the parts will be in and the labor can be finished in six months, even in the country.

Well the heat isn't exactly the only thing. I guess you remember that we choose to tear an eight by twelve foot room off the back of the house because the house moving company wanted to charge $2,000 extra to move it up here. So I am building a new room to replace it. It will extend twelve foot out from the main part of the house and be sixteen foot wide, making it exactly twice as big as the old room. The frame, floor and roof is finished, but I still lack putting the siding on.

When they dug the hole for the septic tanks, the contractor spread the leftover clay across the yard on the west and north sides of the new room (The sides that need 90% of the siding.) Now every time it rains we have to wait about 3 days to walk on it or you are carrying about twenty pounds of clay on each shoe. That is delaying the siding project since it has rained at least every two or three days for the last month. I mean us boys are used to dirt and being muddy, but my helper is Nellie.

Nellie Says I Am Getting To Old

I guess it's truth time. I said the roof is finished and it is but. Nellie looked at me and ask, "How are you going to get the shingles on that roof" (The floor on the west side is five feet off the ground making the roof way up there.)

"Don't worry I can still do a little roofing," I answered haughtily.

"Hey, you are 71 years old and you fall down every once in a while. You aren't going up on that roof and work," she said.

So when she wasn't looking I took a bunch of two by sixes and built a scaffold across the west side of the house that would have held forty nine roofers at a comfortable height. Standing on the scaffold, the edge of the roof was only waist high and a kid could nail shingles down standing there.

"How for up the roof can you reach from that scaffold," Nellie ask.

"Oh, I don't know three or four feet up."

"How about the other six or seven feet up to the ridge." She ask.

"I can do that up on the roof," I smirked, " and if I slip or fall the scaffold will catch me."

"What do you figure you'll break when you hit the scaffold."

After fifty years of marriage, I should know that a man cannot win over a woman's logic, so I compromised and we hired a local man to roof the new room and porch. Now you know the truth.


In Pine Island After About 18 Months

The New Back Porch

You probably don't know that Nellie has been twisting my arm for a porch across the back of the house for years. So I was working on that at the same time. The eight foot wide by thirty two foot long covered porch is just about finished except for the railings. After walking thirty two feet to the open end of the porch where the steps are a few times, I decided it would be smarter to build a second set of steps at the end joining the new room.

Oh yes I almost forgot the new flower beds we hauled 125 fancy concrete blocks that weigh 25 pounds each from Humble and built a couple of flower bed. That's 3,125 pounds in case you didn't do the math already. Then we bought four cubic yards of topsoil. Now we have added hauling dirt and planting flowers to the job list. I am sure that all this work won't make me any prettier, but it is rearranging my fat and my package is looking better. Just think, if we were still in Humble, I would be sitting in the recliner watching cable most of the day. That reminds me, I have to get outside and get the satellite system set up.


In Pine Island In 2003
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