Bald Eagle soaring over my house
The poor pic of the eagle was made this morning. I was set up to shoot feeding robins on the ground when this fellow's shadow went by. I got a few quick shots off, but the exposure settings are terrible. This was made at 250mm zoom. I actually didn't know what brand of bird he was until I enlarged the photo on the computer.
Male robins have stopped singing and are beginning to flock to feed with females and juveniles, all in preparation for the annual fall migration which will beginning for that particular bird at any time now. I am already awaiting their arrival back here next year. I LOVE Springtime!
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In early spring of 1968, my parents decided they had enough of Carolyn, two small kids, and myself living in their house and mooching off of them. They gave us a tad more than one-half acre of property just up the road from them. Carolyn and I looked at house books, picked a style we liked, and ordered blueprints. The prints were a whopping $35 back then, which in that era was a whole lot of money, actually about a half weeks pay for an apprentice electrician.
We contacted a builder whom had been recommended to us, and he gave us a price, excluding painting, landscaping, and electrical work (but it did include paint and materials for the electric). We then took the quote and blueprints to the bank that had the lowest interest rates, and they agreed to do the mortgage dance with us. A survey was made, deeds were checked, and papers and contracts were signed, and all was ready for the house to be built.
We notified the contractor, Herman Jones, to go ahead and start the house and we wanted to be in it by mid-autumn before bad weather started. This was late March, and he said it would be no problem having it ready before winter and that he would get right on it. They broke ground in early May, more than a full month later than he implied. Bad omen!
Jones finally got a crew on site in mid-May, and they poured the foundation and put up the basement walls. The house plans called for an offset in the front, with the bedroom area being deeper than the living area. We told the contractor in the presence of the lender that the plans would have to be reversed left to right to accommodate the hillside lot. The contractor agreed and the lender noted it in the contract which we all initialed.
I came in from work the evening after the front wall had been laid, an lo, it wasn't as agreed, but just like the prints showed. Next morning, Carolyn was on them like skin on a banana. She told them plainly that it was unacceptable, and of course the builder argued that he would just move the living area to the widest part. He about had her convinced, but she finally told him to fix it. So down came the wall, and a few days later another went up. Carolyn saw what they were doing this time, but didn't say a word until the masonry was again completed. They had built a straight wall. Again she confronted them, and the argument was that a straight wall the width of the bedroom area would give us more square footage at the same price, which of course was correct. Good old Carolyn didn't buy into it; she said bring down the wall and do it right, which they did, but took their time accomplishing it.
It was near the end of May when the house went under roof. It was inspected by the lender, a check to the builder was cut, and we didn't see a crew back on our site for nearly a month. The builder had started an apartment complex on some property he owned, and was in a hurry to get it completed and begin collecting rent. Our house and another he had going were put so far back on the burner that they could barely feel the heat. He would occasionally send a crew or a person out to do some work, but little was being accomplished. It was obvious we would not be in the house before cold weather started. We did get him to promise us that he would have all his part done before Thanksgiving, so we could celebrate the Holiday in our new home. When Thanksgiving day rolled around, we were still with my parents, looking longingly up the gravel road to what should have been. The brick had all been laid, the roof had shingles, the electric was all finished except for wall plates, and the electricity had been turned on. Carolyn had primed all the exterior wood surfaces and was ready to begin painting the rooms. Finally and just before Christmas, the interior walls were finished, the carpet was laid, the bathrooms and kitchen had their cabinets and fixtures, and we were looking forward to moving in. Basically, some painting had to be finished, and all the trim woodwork had to be put in place, and the plumbing had to be connected to the kitchen sink and bathrooms.
The carpenters had put the kitchen cabinets in the wrong place, and had cut my ceiling heat cable in two when they installed the stove's hood vent to the attic. It took a while, but I finally got it fixed. The sheetrock people nailed the surface layer of ceiling sheathing in the master bedroom in the wrong place, and cut the heat cable so many times it was unfixable without a complete redo and big delay. We were getting desperate, and told them to forget it and I would install a basboard heater later on. I never did, but it didn't get cold in the room as long as the door was open to the hallway.
January 1969 rolled around. In October of '68, Carolyn's dad had died suddenly from heart failure, and we were all still in a funk, and Carolyn being an only child, was spending a lot of time with her mom. At last the trim work was finished, and all that was missing was some plumbing. I finally got pissed and asked a neighborhood Mr. Fix-it to finish the work. He knocked it out in less than a day, charged me $25, and the next day we began our move. Actually, most of our meager belongings were already in the basement, and all we had left to truck to the house was our bedroom furniture.
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The moral of this story is, if you are going to have a house built, check your contractor thouroughly! Make sure he is able to do what he says he can and will do. Make him sign a contract giving him X amount of days to have it completed and the shiny new keys in your indebted palms or he will face substantial financial penalties. A lawyer is handy for this sort of thing.
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