by Donna Swagerty Shreve
A building can be just a house or it can develop into a home. A home gets filled with noise and activity that turn into traditions. Friends and family invade from time to time. I feel our house at 933 Oakleaf Way became a home. The year was 1977 and our house at 423 Bedford Road was too small for our expanding family. It was barely over 1100 square feet and had two bedrooms and one bath. It also had a very small yard and was located in the wrong school district.
I started in on the quest for a bigger house. John, my husband, was not interested in finding a new place but said if I could arrange it, he would move. The challenge was on. Several new sub divisions were developing in the north part of town and I had gone through the model homes. I had a certain model that I really liked and shared my opinion with my mother and sister. They were out looking also and found a house at a Sunday open house they thought I would like. It was the model I favored and the original owners had added many upgrades. Time was an issue so I called up a certain realtor who happened to be a family friend. I said I wanted to make an offer on the house contingent on the selling of our small house. The realtor agreed and said we would put our house on the market that would start with a tour by the local realtors on Wednesday followed by an open house that Saturday.
I called Mom and told her the walk-through by realtors would be in two days. The house was far from display mode and my sister and mother hurried over armed with various cleaning supplies. The three of us performed a miracle and the house was ready for the bus of realtors that arrived Wednesday. In the group was a local realtor who decided to buy the house for his mother and gave us an offer and we signed the papers that Friday. My time limit on the bigger house would be void after Monday. There was another person waiting in line after me with an offer. The timing could not have been better.
We moved our belongings to the new house and started making it our own. The original owners had lived in the house for just 18 months and there were still projects to be done. We had enough equity in our previous house to just afford the downpayment on the new house. Money was tight therefore, house improvements were slow.
The huge raised flour de lis blue wall paper in the master bedroom was removed after I had a forced two week bedrest ordered due to a bout of pneumonia. As soon as I had the strength, I removed the offending wall paper and painted the walls a soothing color.
The dark brown shag carpet was replaced when we had finally worn holes into well traveled places. The grass cloth wall paper came down in the family room when our cats voiced their opinion by using parts of the wall paper as a scratching post. The boys got new wall paper when they were old enough to care. My father helped me wall paper the boys’ rooms with an illness already limiting his body. Dad negotiated a compromise for wall paper in Aaron’s room. Aaron wanted Star Wars wall paper on all of his walls. I wanted a tame muted stripe that would appeal to a broader audience. Dad suggested and we agreed that the muted stripe wall paper would be on the wall facing the hall door. The Star Wars paper was on the wall opposite the bed where Aaron would see it. This way we were both happy.
Our living room was empty for over 5 years until I could afford to furnish it with furniture I enjoyed instead of accepting other’s cast offs or cheap furniture that would only last a few years. I hosted a neighborhood babysitting co-op Santa party one year. The room contained a large ring of folding chairs I had borrowed from the neighborhood school. One of the guests was so impressed I had cleaned my living room to accommodate everyone.
Our front yard had been put in but it was a bit over planted. We slowly took out and then replaced as time went on. We used a live Christmas tree in a huge wine barrel. As it grew larger, we then planted it in a corner in the back yard. Our backyard came undeveloped and we got to start from scratch. Dad was willing to help John set up the backyard landscaping This was not Dad’s first experience in setting up a yard. Because our area is full of adobe clay, the entire back yard needed to have a good foot of the soil removed and replaced. Dad arrived with his wheel barrow and matched John’s shoveling and removal of adobe. This was done after he had been diagnosed with prostate cancer. Dad complained about his loss of strength and John was impressed with what Dad had left to give to this massive project. The excess adobe was shoveled into wheel barrows to the back of a pickup truck and taken to a place where dirt fill was wanted.
After several trucks loads were removed, good dirt was brought in. According to my father, Manteca loam was the best and several yards were dumped on our driveway to be put into wheel barrows to the back yard. This rich loam was spread throughout the back yard. It then had to be leveled and sloped away from the house to protect against flooding.
The grass was planted and trees were added. The back yard was exposed to full sun so shade from trees would be welcomed. I started with that former in-house Christmas tree and put it in the corner. It would have done fine if I hadn’t added the wrong fertilizer to it. I replaced it with an early variety orange tree. We started new family tradition where the boys went out Christmas morning and picked enough oranges to make Christmas breakfast mimosas to compliment breakfast. Of course we started this tradition when both boys were under age so it made it a big deal. When the swing set wore out, I planted a mulberry tree so I would have a source of fresh mulberry leaves for the latest crop of silk worms in my classrooms. Our second dog Daisy did me the favor of destroying that messy tree and I replaced it with an apricot and peach tree to provide a source for pies, jam and fruit roll ups.
The back yard provided a back drop for birthday party games, Easter egg hunts and Aaron’s wedding rehearsal dinner. In the far east corner, we had a hot tub that received a lot of family use. We took out the master bedroom window and replaced it with sliding doors out to an additional patio. I planted a small vegetable garden next to the hot tub and that garden provided many vegetables over the years.
I hosted a big family Thanksgiving in 1984 because Dad was so ill and Mom had her hands full taking care of Dad and needed help with someone else doing Thanksgiving. Several tables were set up so it seemed like one big table that ran from the fireplace to the kitchen. We seated all of Mom and Dad’s immediate family plus a friend of Jane’s. In future Thanksgivings I hosted Brian’s family in our house. To help Mary Lou cope with typical Swagerty gatherings, I handed her a large glass of wine and had her get into the hot tub. Each year as our families grew, sleeping arrangements changed. One year, I gave up the master bedroom and slept on the floor on a blow-up bed. I started a tradition of a pancake eating contest on the morning of Thanksgiving as I was hoping to fill up all of the cousins so they could make it to a 2:00 Thanksgiving dinner. We finally ended the contest when the older boys were defeated by a younger girl cousin.
Brad took on the challenge of creating a magical atmosphere for Aaron’s rehearsal dinner in July of 2003. Brad cleared out the flower borders and strung little lights in the trees. With borrowed round tables and folding chairs, the outdoor dining experience happened under the stars in a magical summer evening that Stockton can have.
The two boys eventually left the family home to establish themselves in the world. Our home was well lived in and needed some renovations after 27 years of wear and tear. At the same time, it became evident that my mother needed assistance and would need to move to O’Connor Woods. We rented the condo to her where she had lived for 22 years. Much to our surprise, selling t he condo was not a practical solution once Mother moved out. Capital gains reared up and our one reasonable solution was to sell our Oakleaf Way house. We did not have time on our side. Mom had a move-in date of December 17. We now needed to quickly fix up our family home and put it up for sale. At the same time, I had to clean and renovate the condo and move Mom out. The entire process took three months and we moved into the condo the first part of April 2006.
The couple that bought our home brought five children and two boxer dogs into the house. We had sold at the top of the market just before it fell. They had to default a year later and the bank sold the house for half the price from a year ago. The next buyers were an older couple. They had a lot of work to do to help the house recover from the invasion of the previous year. Within another year or two, the older woman of the couple died. The surviving man remarried a much younger woman. Soon after their marriage, the older man died.
The young wife for whatever reasons had money troubles to the extent her electricity was turned off. A friend of hers reconnected the electricity and by-passed the meter. This woman got creative in solving her money woes. She started running a busy business with various male customers coming to the house to visit her working girls.
Finally enough breaking of several laws got the sheriff to come and physically remove her. The bank then sold the house to a couple who were serious about restoring the house into a show piece. On a realtor site, I was able to view pictures of most every room. There was no longer any trace of us left but the house had been restored and greatly improved. If only those walls could have talked!
1847 words
10/22/19
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