Seventy Years Ago . . .
David C. Hay
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Seventy Years Ago . . . David C. Hay |
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My dad, Charles C. Hay, was an engineer, and his work involved living in many cities
in the US. When my mom, Henrietta, became pregnant with me, they concluded
that the time had come to settle down. They were both from Denver, Colorado, and they wanted to stay in the state. They didn't like the big city, though, and found Grand Junction, a small town on the Western Slope of the rockies, to be appealing.
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Dad enquired and found a radio station in Grand Junction that needed an engineer, so they decided to settle there. They found a three-acre plot out in the country with a hill overlooking farms and ranches--and in the distance to the west, Colorado National Monument. The Monument is a unique palisade of sandstone formations that face the Grand Valley and Grand Junction.
They invested $6,000 in the three-acre plot and a do-it-yourself house kit.
In April, 1947, Mom delivered a new baby boy (me!), and they set out to assemble their castle. I found some pictures from this and am happy to present them here.
Here you are standing on the site, looking to the west, with Colorado National Monument in the distance...
Looking just south of west...
Here you see the excavation that was done to lay out the shape of the foundation. Beyond are the cinder blocks that will become the basement.
The first row of cinderblocks...
As the wall goes up, the windows are framed...
Here is more detail on the windows...
Henrietta works on the door...
Wall details...
Chuck plays "Erector Set" assembling the steel beams...
Walls in the house were not sheet rock. They were sheets of 3/4 inch plywood...
Here's Henrietta examining the wall panels...
The first wall!
Chuck is at the lower right, working with his buddies where two walls come together...
Here Chuck puts finishing touches on the attic ventilation...
This is the indoor plumbing, as viewed from the bathroom to the kitchen...
An inside wall arises, as viewed from the kitchen back to the bathroom...
The new house, arising on the hillside in 1947.
I was told stories that I spent much of the first year of my life in a basket, sitting in a tree. As long as there was pounding and noise going on, I slept peacefully. If things became silent, I started to raise a fuss.
I will of course never know if that is true. But I did always believe that "Rockabye Baby" had been written for me...
The year I was a Senior in High School(1965), I took this picture...
In 1965, I left Grand Junction to go to college, and from there to see the world. Mom finally moved to a condo in town in the mid 1970s.
The couple she sold it to added the balcony. Duh! Why didn't we think of that? I always liked the view out the windows. But Dad left when I was 13,and Mom and I never had any money for such improvements.
More recently, an owner dramatically modernized the inside of the house. It looks lovely, but it is strange. Originally, the ceilings were your standard eight foot variety, and the walls around the stairs separated the living room from the dining room and kitchen. In the remodeled version, the walls around the stairs--and the ceiling--were removed, creating a spectacular open space with a high ceiling. The two bedrooms at the other end became a single master bedroom. The walk-in closet occupies the space that was my bedroom.
The closet in the living room where we kept the hi-fi equipment (record player and tape deck)is gone, as are the holes I drilled in the floor under it and in my bedroom to run wires to attach to a speaker and controls, so I could listen in bed.
(Understand that we had invested in a super high-tech feature on the telephone: a long cord so I could take it into my bedroom as well.)
Downstairs there was one bedroom and a finished "playroom", but the other half was unfinished--unless you count my dad's "Ham shack" tucked in the corner. This did allow for a great work area with workbench and an area for a darkroom.
Now the entire downstairs is finished, with two bedrooms, a utility room, and a second bathroom. Ah, well...
When I was a toddler, there were few neighbors. John Sholes did move in next door about then, and spent several years building his house and a house for his in-laws. In the 1950s, the uranium deposits to the south of Grand Junction became important, and Grand Junction expanded to accomodate an influx of geologists and engineers. In particular, Galley Lane was paved, Young Street was added with its seven houses--and suddenly we were living in the suburbs!
The hills and fields to the west were still there, though, as you can see here. Kids with army shovels spent many hours digging fox holes, carving fortresses and excavating small highways. This land was owned by the Hetzel family, who never bothered us children when we got creative.
Not visible here, but just to the left of the hill and a little closer was "Hetzel's Pond", which in the winter provided an excellent skating rink.
(...and of course the hill was an absolutely lovely place to sit late at night with someone special, and enjoy a magnificant view of nothing but millions and millions of stars on a completely black sky...)
During the late 60s and early 70s, Exxon undertook a project to develop the oil shale to our east. In addition to creating the town of Parachute, this also resulted in more growth in Grand Junction. As a consequence, even more houses were built.
Here you see a Google-eye view of the site in 2016--with annotations.
In this picture you don't see any of my childhood play areas: The dashed line shows the border of the three acres that used to constitute my personal playground. It has now been sub-divided, however, and a second house added. To the left you have what used to be the Hetzels' land. Now, instead of viewing across the way to my favorite hill, you are confronted with two ugly houses. (OK, in my opinion, they are ugly. Others may disagree.)
Hetzel's pond? As I learned to say when I moved to New York: "Fugettabountit!"
As it happened, Exxon pulled the plug on the shale project in the mid-70s. This of course had a devastating effect on Grand Junction's economy.
Now it seems to me that the least they could have done, then, would have been to tear out those subdivisions and return the farms and ranches.
I suppose not. Ah, well.
I must say, the "new" house looks pretty good. They've done a nice job with the grounds.
The treehouse is certainly a nice touch for modern parents to provide.
But the thing is, when I was a kid, my friends and I built our own. It was in an apple tree in the orchard to the north of the house.
