The Library

Contemporary History #8 – The Library

Sorry Mom.

Mom loved her Sunroom. She’d sit out there in the summer and watch the birds, note the flowers, read, entertain friends, nap. She had it installed in 1991. Her notes say, “Had porch closed in with glass. I love it. No bugs no wasps”. In 1992 she “had electricity put on porch. No heat, tho some winter days can sit out there a while.” In 1994 she added a ceiling fan (“much better!”) and in 1999 painted the floor dark red. (I think she had the paint left over from painting the basement floor and “wanted to use it up”). A set of three steps brings you from the kitchen down to the porch level. In 2004 Mom had railings added to them. There did come the time that she found she was no longer able to go out and enjoy the Sunroom, she couldn’t easily navigate those steps any longer, but she could still look out the kitchen door at it and remember.

These photos are of the newly installed Sunroom. I found them in one of Mom’s scrapbooks. I knew there would be photos. We ARE talking about Eleanor Drum, after all! Top two photos and bottom right are looking toward Butler Drive; bottom left is looking toward Butler Mountain.

One of the first things she did after the Sunroom was put in, was paint the white wall that once was the outside of our house, blue. She loved blue. After the wall, she then painted a library cart, a glass-topped side table, two end tables that my uncle had made, a storage box, a small bench my Dad had made,  two chairs (at least one hand-made), a rocking chair (also, I believe, hand-made), a waste basket my Dad made, a watering can for her garden, and a large metal milk can all blue; antiques all. Out in the yard were two Adirondack chairs Dad had made. Those were also now blue. If she saw it, it turned blue. She finished off the “look” of the sun room by adding blue curtains. She called it her “Blue Phase”. I know at least one antique dealer who went into his own blue phase just by looking at some of those now blue antiques. 

This photo was taken in December, 1996. It shows Mom’s Sunroom Christmas decorations. One also notices the blue wall that once was white. Some of the blue furniture can also be seen. The “fireplace” is a fake fireplace that long stood in our Livingroom. The original idea was to put a fireplace on the east wall. This was the “place-holder”. The fireplace never got built. As for the fake fireplace, I do not know what ever became of it. In fact, I was surprised to see it in this photograph. I thought it had long been gone prior to 1996!

This photo was taken because of the snow in February of  1957.
That’s my brother, Nathan, standing on the porch, age 3.
Ronnie had not yet made his appearance.
He'll come along in October of that year.
This photo is interesting because it shows the “window wall” and
the original porch. It also shows a TV antenna,
right in the middle of the roof.

Dad built Drumyngham in 1954. Mom and Dad bought a “kit” from Turin’s Swift Homes, a dealership which was located on East Green Street in Hazleton. The signature is hard to read but it looks like either Tom or Lou, last name Turin, was the local representative of Swift Homes, Inc., whose headquarters were located in Elizabeth, PA. Mr. Turin sold my parents plans and materials for Swift’s Highland (24’ x 36’) model and added on a “window wall” and a carport. By the way, the paperwork also indicates the roof would have blue shingles, which I remember were on the house. More of mom’s influence? House Paint is also listed – white house paint. I bet that’s where Dad drew the line.

Mom said she had demanded the window wall be added to bring light into what she thought would be a very dark Livingroom. She was right. Even with the wall, the room tends to be dark! It was Dad who wanted the carport, but not to keep his car there. He wanted it to be a porch where they could sit and enjoy the summer evenings, watching the moon rise and listening to the crickets chirping in the late evening. The original porch floor was wood. If memory serves me right, it was painted blue. Later, Dad poured concrete over the floor for a more stable, lasting porch floor.

According to the paperwork, the whole thing originally cost $3,444.67 (that’s $32,972 in today’s dollars). Dad planned a basement with a concrete floor and an under-house garage. He must have added on those plans, and costs, himself. Delivery was made on November 28, 1953. Just to show how things have changed since 1953, the driver’s instructions included the comment, “Have driver call – Drums 2866 – from Conyngham (which is on Route 29) between Berwick and Hazleton and we will meet driver and direct him to site.” I’m not sure who wrote that. The “we” implies the buyer. I’m guessing my Grandfather, Elmer, wrote those instructions. He helped Dad build the house. The telephone number was, I assume, my Grandparents’. The form also includes an “emergency number”. That was “2053 Drums” which is the number indicated on the contract as being my parents’ number but I don’t know where in Drums that phone would have rung.

 

Contract on left, details in middle, delivery instructions to the right on pink paper.

I love books. Books have always been a force in my life. I even made a book when I was eight or nine. Entitled “Funnies”, it was a “collection” of things I thought were VERY funny when I was eight or nine. For example, “Janey: When is a hen not a hen? John: When he’s a rooster!” and “Jimmy: When can a snale go fast? Jo Ann: When he is falling!”  It also had tongue-twisters like “Here is a tuge tister. As oun blue bat blow in the ball the outher blue bat blow out. Say ti fast.” Look, I SAID I was only eight or nine!

It also had picture stories, this one about Popeye. read pages from top to bottom.

I especially enjoy books about U.S. Presidents. I own a few of those; 936 at last count. History, of course, as well; mostly local history. My wife likes cookbooks. Our collection also includes nature: wildlife, birds, insects, flowers, trees. Some literature is included as well (A Tree Grows in Brooklyn, the Harry Potter series, etc.). There are also categories such as biographies, DIY projects, 4-H, Atlases, and on and on. I believe it was Thomas Jefferson who once said, “I can’t live without books.” I know what he means. But where to keep them?

One day Phyllis said to me, “What about making the Sunroom over into a library?” That is all she had to say. A bit of planning, some discussion with my brother-in-law, John Emanuelson, who has a small library in his own house, and the change-over ensued. Down came the decorations mom had hung on the blue wall. The blue milk can and a few other items made their way into storage, or worse, and a weekend was scheduled for the elbow grease to go into high gear.

On May 10, 2019, John and his wife, Susanne, pulled into my driveway. They’d come all the way from Delaware; saws and drills and levels and hammers and more packed into the back of his bright yellow pick-up truck, ready to be put to good use. Truth be told, they actually arrived the day prior but I “gave” them the rest of Thursday to “rest up”.

Friday morning, after a bit of last-minute plan-adjustments and measurements, off we went in John’s truck to purchase the raw materials, and a ladder, that we’d need to accomplish the first phase of the make-over; hanging shelves on the blue wall. I don’t know how many times John went up and down that new ladder but I have to hand it to him, he did it a lot, far more times than I think I’d have been able to and, again truth be told, he was born a number of years prior to me! By the end of that Friday, however, after the sweat had been wiped from our brows and the sawdust had settled onto the grass out front, shelves now hung over the wall Mom had turned blue.

Now for Phase two! That began Saturday morning. The plan called for five bookcases. Four of them needed to be purchased. Those would stand along the outer (west) wall of the Sunroom/porch. The fifth was to be moved from where it has long stood in the Livingroom out into the Library to be the fifth bookcase; this time standing against the South wall. Moving that case out was where we started. Then off we went again toward West Hazleton in search of the four new bookcases. Finding those bookcases proved a bit more difficult than we had anticipated but by visiting three different stores, we reached the desired total and headed again back to Drumyngham.

Furniture these days comes unassembled in a box, with hardware and instructions included, ready for assembly. If you’ve ever assembled even a small table that has come out of such a box, you already well know the “fun” we had assembling not one, or two, or even three, but FOUR of these over-sized puzzles. On one bookcase, the first one we tackled, we followed the directions to the letter and STILL ended up having to partially pull it back apart and re-do the work – the instructions were REVERSED half-way through! When we realized what the problem was, we called it quits for Saturday and all of us; Phyllis, Susanne, John and me; headed off to The Powerhouse Eatery to enjoy an early Mother’s Day celebration of fine food and friendship.

On Sunday, we finished up assembling all four cases. In one of the instruction booklets they added, at the end of step 11, “This completes assembly. Clean with your favorite furniture polish or a damp cloth. Wipe dry. And celebrate, why not share your success story?” The bold is theirs and they followed this note with icons for Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest, and YouTube as suggestions for where to do this sharing.

I was tempted. Oh, how I was tempted!

By the end of Sunday, however, all that was left to do was anchor the cases to the wall for safety. I don’t know where he found the energy to do it, but there went John, again up and down the ladder, finishing that last step in the process.

The next two photos were taken a few weeks after the great make-over had been completed. By then I’d had the chance to throw away the packing materials, clean and vacuum the space, put up some of the shelves on the wall and fill them with books. So, as you can see, the project is shaping up quite nicely.

 Looking toward Butler Drive.

Looking toward Butler Mountain.

 

The Carport that had been made into a Porch that was transformed into a Sunroom had now been made-over into a Library ready to receive the books for which it was envisioned.

And I love it.

Sorry Mom.

The cup was Mom’s. It sits in front of some of Mom's books. She drew the face on the rock. She said it looked like her.