The House in Laval West
71, 16th Ave. later changed to. . . 1901, 35th Ave.
In 1955, we were living in Montreal. Mom and Dad, Michael (3 years old), me (2 years old) and Gerry (baby).
Dad was without a car since selling the Cadillac several years previous and he made an offer on a brand new 1955 Chevrolet. The dealer wanted $2,400.00 and he was offering $1,900.00. The dealer negotiated down to $2,100.00, but would not go any lower. At this point, Dad made an offer on a house instead. He offered $5,900.00 on a little house in Laval West and before long, we moved in. Dad still worked at Marconi, so he commuted with a neighbour friend. There was a big back yard and a ‘bush’ next door. We were always outside.
The house was a ‘converted’ summer place. Except it wasn’t converted. There was precious little insulation in the walls and ceiling, no central heat and no hot water. My grandfather visited and remarked; “There’s going to be some cold asses in here this winter”. He was right.
The first few years, Mom and Dad heated the house with the kitchen stove. It was an old oil-burning stove which operated with glass carboys (glass 5-gallon bottles of oil turned upside-down in a ‘receiver’ at the back of the stove). There was a 200-gallon oil tank outside at the back of the house, but it was not connected to the stove. We filled the glass jars from the tank. When we ran out of oil, we could purchase five gallons at a local store. They had a coin-operated machine and we would sometimes fetch oil in a carboy pulled along on a little wagon.
The oil stove was in the kitchen and there was no other heat source in the house. You can imagine how cold it got in the bedrooms. On really cold nights, Mom and Dad would take turns tending the stove. They wouldn’t go to sleep while the stove was lit. They had witnessed their share of house fires and it was one thing that terrified them.
It was cold. Very cold. I can remember the floor feeling like ice. However, we don’t seem to have suffered any ill-effects and, according to Mom, we were all pretty healthy. As kids, we always had flannel pyjamas. I suppose that helped.
The water pipes would freeze. Mom would melt snow in big pots on the stove. We would sometimes get water from the ‘summer’ places across the street. They had a hand pump over the outside well.
After a few years, Dad contracted a guy to put in a furnace. It was amazing. The house was warm. Even in the bedrooms. He didn’t have an easy time of it though. The poor guy had to crawl around the cellar on his stomach on the dirt floor and he had to hang the furnace sideways from the floor joists.
In later years, the thermostat gave us trouble. The furnace wouldn’t start unless the thermostat was jostled a bit. When it got cold in the house, we would thump on the wall near the thermostat to get the furnace to fire up. I can remember Dad calling out from his chair in the living room, “bang the wall!”
Several years later, my folks hired a carpenter and he built a small extension on the bathroom for a bathtub. We lived there until I was twenty (1973) and the house never had a hot water tank. For bathing, dishes and laundry (wringer washer), we would heat water in big pots on the stove.
I am not complaining here, just explaining what it was. The house, as I remember it, was a comfortable and happy home for our family of eight, even though it was a two bedroom bungalow with one bathroom. I grew up there. So did my sister and four brothers.
The house had a ‘summer kitchen’ and that was converted to a bedroom for my sister. My four brothers and I shared the two bedrooms. Mom and Dad converted half of the long living room into their bedroom.
Mom worked hard at keeping the place in good repair and she was more than capable.
All-in-all, it was a great place to grow up.