The wilderness drew them, so they built. House is now filled with beautiful memories

We saw this pond in the woods, just over an acre of tranquil water. Far back on the western shore stood a little placard: “For Sale.”

So in 1964 my wife, Lenore, and I thrashed our way through brush under two green burr oaks and contemplated that bit of the Black Swan Lake development. We bought the lot for $3,500. Sixty years later, writing this piece, I sit now somewhat elevated in the house we built north of those oaks — huge by now, towering over the backyard..

Creating this home was a great episode in our 61 years of marriage, though debating the shape of it brought us as close to divorce as anything else. Lenore said some of her last words here in 2017 before I rushed her to the hospital where she died.

So we came to own this site, placed in a virtual wilderness that ran steeply down two miles northward to the Kaw River in Shawnee, which then had a population of around 15,000 residents. Today Shawnee has nearly five times that many, 72,260. To build here, first we had to pile up money, about $29,000 for house and lot, equivalent to $293,000 today. We groaned about the interest rate of 5.5%. Today that rate often hits 7%.

I was a Kansas City Star reporter and my wife was a civil engineer. We didn’t feel rich, but we didn’t feel poor — a good basis for building the home to last out our lives.

With money on board, you can use an architect (expensive) or, as we did, hire a sharp draftsman designer like James Lindsay, whose blueprints I recently found in a China closet drawer. We stood behind to direct him as he detailed our house, where electrical outlets would go, where bedrooms and plumbing pipes, fireplace and furnace, water heater and attic fan — all according to the city building code.

We hired Vanderford and Ally, first names forgotten, as builders. They were sharp fellows, but they suggested using fake interior ceiling beams to impart a rustic look.

“Absolutely not,” said my wife, rolling out her own plan. It featured as the spine of the house a monstrous exposed 6-by-18-inch Douglas fir beam running the 34-foot length of living room and kitchen.

From a library book I learned that while redwood discolors in northern climates and cedar often decays, cypress weathers gray and lasts almost forever. At Paxton Lumber in Kansas City, we found a treasure of rough-sawn cypress 1-by-12s that became our board-on-board siding. Never painted or coated, they endure.

I left The Star early one afternoon and drove out to the site, by that time an anthill of swarming, sawing, crawling, hammering and yammering workers. Somehow, completely without motorized assistance, they had hauled that huge beam 35 feet above the earth and anchored it to vertical columns. How? I wish I had watched.

Oh yes, Lenore and I did quarrel over windows: she wanting fewer, I wanting more. The marriage survived.

Six months from the start, thanks to those bankers and planners and hard workers, we had a home. During our 1965 house warming with 40 Star colleagues, it rained 5 inches in an hour, pond water rising over the road to briefly trap our friends. Drinking wine, munching snacks, we reveled in the downpour’s howl on our cathedral ceiling. Twenty years later, we were likewise gleeful watching golf-ball-sized hail hiss into the pond, raising 3-foot geysers. But we weren’t so joyous afterward, learning we needed a new roof.

As often happens in a new house, children appeared, Julie and Amy, the first adopted and the second a lovely surprise. When we brought Amy home from the hospital, Julie tottered over to plant a kiss on her sister. A wet one, on the lips.

Building a house gets you a neighborhood and neighbors. We were lucky. We often marched in the annual July 4 parade around the lake. With Lenore suffering a sprained ankle, I once paraded her in a wheelbarrow, to the applause of spectators.

Building a house also gets you surprising tax bills. That is because much commercial real estate in Johnson County gets the light touch while homes are pounded. Our brand-new house and lot, for which we paid the equivalent of $293,000 in 1964, was appraised this year by Johnson County for $401,000. Not much new here, just a worn old house with few improvements. Ouch.

But I still love it, this home which lasted out Lenore’s life and — at my age of 89 — nearly mine as well. Here I sit at my desk, still breathing, still writing, happy to be still happy in this home we built 60 long years ago.

Contact the columnist at hammerc12@gmail.com.