Written by Jean Steel Venrick

What woman wouldn’t be happy to move into a brand new house when she married. My mother was such a person. My father had built a lovely two-bedroom home on the outskirts of town and had it furnished when they married June 22, 1929. He was 23 and she was 20.

He worked for a lumber company, which provided quick access to buy materials needed to build this lovely place. Not only did he build the house but he made a lot of the furniture to go with it. I still have a dresser he made for this house.

When they moved into their first home after their marriage they had everything they needed except a skillet in which to fry their first breakfast eggs. So what to do? They did not rush out and buy one – mother found a paint can lid and used that-- I’m sure they had more than one laying around.

Not only did he build the house but he built a garage, a shop and plenty of decorative feature in the backyard including a small fish pond. They had it made, or so it seems. Three years later I came along to make their lives more complete—that was in 1932. Those were the Great Depression days and my parents began thinking about the necessities of life, mainly food they may not have should my Dad be laid off his job. Then he was laid off for an undetermined time.

In their short time together they had purchased 36 acres four miles from town that had nothing on it but an old log barn. My Dad built a small 3-room house, which later would become the garage. This was five years after their marriage.

They moved from this lovely house they had moved into when they got married to live in this quickly built 3-room abode in the country. Three days after they moved into the little country place, my Dad got his job back and worked at the West Side Lumber Company for 36 years altogether.

He never stopped building on the farm because there were always buildings needed: A chicken coop, a small barn, corn cribs, work shop and a smoke house for meats and other outbuildings for storage.

The idea was to live in the little house until he could build a large new house. That large house was ready to move into in 1939, on the fourth of July. It was a beauty compared to that little 3-room building. After moving into the big house my Dad decided they needed a larger barn so he started one, with my mother working with him, even way up on top of the roof. She was no stranger to work herself as she had driven the tractor as he scooped out the basement for the big house—holding my little brother on her lap as she drove the tractor which pulled the scoop!

They lived on the farm twenty years, during which time Dad worked in town and farmed on the side. After I left for college in 1951 my parents purchased a lot in town and built a modest two-bedroom house, which they moved into in 1952.

I have a brother, five years younger, who said he went to school one morning and instead of going home on the school bus, went to the newly finished house after school. He was rather disappointed he was not given the time to get one last look around the country place.

Across the street from the new house in town was a corner lot that took my Dad’s eye. The “building bug” struck again and another house was in the making. This time he built a large and stylish house. It was a show place with two large stone fireplaces, one upstairs and the other in the basement; the upstairs portion was a walk-around as you came into the front door on a slate floor. On the front side he laid up a portion of the wall with the same Bedford limestone; all laid and faced by himself. Even though a finish carpenter there was little he would not attempt and finish as well as anyone could, even stonework. Mother was quite happy with the smaller modest home but they moved into the new larger house just like any other house he would build in the years of their marriage.

While living in this new location, he purchased a cottage at the Methodist Campground in Lancaster (Ohio) and fixed it up as well. This little cottage was two stories and a tree had fallen onto it ruining the top floor so my Dad removed the second floor and made a lovely one-floor plan with a screened-in porch. They used that cottage as a get-away in he summer. At the campground there were activities going on during the summer so they would attend those some of the time.

Meanwhile they decided the showplace was a bit more than they wanted to retire in, so once again, in 1963, he built another more modest house, just one street from where they started housekeeping in 1929 – they moved into this new house November 1964.

Still the “building bug” worked on him in 1975 when they bought some ground twenty miles from where they lived, out in a serene country setting where he could build again. This time he bought a mobile home, remodeling it some, plus building a garage, a shelter house and an outdoor privy. This place was just another get-away from the city; in fact they named it,” The Steel-Away”, and my husband designed a nice oval sign with that name on it, placing it in the gable of the garage. The family used to routinely gather on holidays as Dad used to like picnics inviting anyone who would come to “party” with them.

The last outdoor project he made was a storage building for my brother in 1987. After retiring in 1968, at age 62, he made sixty-some clocks in his basement workshop, most of them were grandfather clocks. On the Wednesday before he died on the following Sunday, in 1991, he had been mowing grass at their “Steel-Away” driving an old Bolen’s Husky mower. Throughout all his life he never worked on Sunday because that was the “day of rest”. I can easily say, “I’m proud of my father.”

THE WORDWRIGHT
I found it easy to be proud of my father-in-law also. He was an inspiration to me as well.