Hidden within these walls…
By Bill Duncan
The View From Here
I am remodeling a house that was built almost 60 years ago as a farmhouse on the acreage I own in the Riversdale section of rural Roseburg. The remodeling entails tearing down walls.
The only thing I found between the old studs – true 2 x 4s – was the shed skin of a gecko. Well, maybe it was just a common lizard, but since my newspaper colleague Rose Quimby collects stuffed geckos, I gave it to her in a plastic sandwich bag. For some reason she didn’t display it with all her other geckos.
Before you go getting squeamish on me about things that crawl, let me assure you this column is not about those things. It is about what is inside the walls.
My find was not nearly as exciting as what happened when my son, Jeff, remodeled a 100-year-old house in Oakland, Calif.
He found a handwritten letter dated Feb. 19, 1979, inside a wall that was being torn down during the remodeling. The letter was signed by Douglas Wayne Parr, who wrote that while remodeling, he had found a note inside the wall from his father, Harold Arthur Parr, dated Sept. 16, 1937, stating that he was born in that very room on Oct. 10, 1913.
The father’s note said it had been his grandmother’s room before him. Douglas Parr wrote: "I was born Feb. 28, 1945, and growing up, this was my room."
He noted that the room became his son, Andrew William’s, room.
"Five generations of our family have lived in this house and slept in this room," he wrote. Then he left an intriguing reminder to Jeff, as the new owner. "Now you are tearing this wall down for some project only you know. So you can have this room to sleep in now. If you tear down lots of walls, you’ll find more notes. Read them and think of all the good years that the Parrs spent living in this house."
It left Jeff with a mystery: Are there other letters and historic documents still sandwiched in the walls that were not torn down for the remodeling? While it is intriguing, he does not plan to rip out the walls just on a hunch that other letters would be found.
Finding the letter, Jeff said, was like opening a time capsule. The house was built in 1900. It was remodeled in 1906 because of damage from the San Francisco earthquake. A family named Parr built the house and lived there until 1995.
They then sold the house to a woman who rented it out for a year to John Mabry, a professor of theology at UC Berkeley. She then sold it to Daniel Jenkins, the man who sold the house to my son, Jeff.
When I bought the old farmhouse I live in, it had been remodeled by the previous owner, who added an upstairs to what was then a small house. I remodeled it to fit my family’s needs in 1977. Now it is undergoing another remodel.
Admittedly, I have been intrigued about the history of this old house. I know the owner just before me had an art gallery in what is now my family room and taught art classes in a large room on the second floor, which I converted into two bedrooms.
From findings in the barn, I know that once it was a hatchery. It appears from the loafing shed that one of the previous owners had a milk cow. From the fruit trees on the property, I would say it was once a prune orchard, perhaps even an apple orchard.
All this is speculation because none of the previous owners left a written record in any of the walls I have torn out over the years. I think, just before the sheet rock goes up in the new remodeling, I will stick this column inside the wall and someone may find it 100 years from now if, in a 100 years, anything on this Earth is left standing.
Bill Duncan can be reached by writing to P.O. Box 812, Roseburg, OR 97470, or by e-mail at elderstatesmansblog@yahoo.com
March 30th, 2011 at 5:53 pm
Dear Mr. Duncan,
My daughter, Katie Parr, just e-mailed me a column that you published on August 28, 2006, about your son remodeling a house in Oakland, California. I know that house on Davis Street well, because Douglas Wayne Parr is my brother and my father is Harold Arthur Parr.
My father died seven years ago. My brother Doug has had a series of strokes and is no longer writing to me as he used to from Colorado. Whetehr that is because he can’t work his fingers, or his mind is harmed, I don’t know for sure. I will go in June to visit him and see how he is doing first hand. If he is cogent, he will be utterly delighted to read this column. His son, Andrew, also lives in Colorado Springs, and will be likewise interested.
I have many memories of that Davis Street house where your son apparently lives. My father wrote down many of those memories, and I have the manuscript. The top floor of the house used to stand on the ground about two blocks away. It was moved and jacked up early in the 20th century, and the floor below built underneath it. In the ground floor front room, to the left of the front door as I knew it, there was a cabinet built into the wall. The bottom shelf was false, and opened to a “secret compartment.” I don’t recall if it was all that secret and hidden, or if that’s just the way I remember it. In fact it was more obvious than I remember. At any rate, your son will know if he has stumbled upon it, and whether in fact my brother (who was always a prolific note-writer) left anything there.
If your son would like to contact me for more of the house history, have him feel free to contact me at this e-mail address. I live in Castro Valley, near Oakland, and still go weekly to the Fruitvale District. I haven’t driven down Davis Street to look at the old house for a couple of years, but I have thought about it, and looked at it on Google Streetview. I have wondered who lived there now. I have many photographs of the old house, and even a home movie of my grandfather coming down the back steps. He died in the 1920s, so it was an early movie. I wonder if the old pond is still there. It was round. There were fired clay animals imbedded in the sides at one time, but they were long since lost before I used to play by that pond.
It’s funny, but I had a dream about that old garage and back yard only last week, in which all the old Parrs were assembled and puttering with the tools. The Parrs were avid do-it-yourselfers–mechanics, carpenters, electricians and engineers. I turned out the oddball. I teach English in a local high school.
Your column will become a cherished part of the part history papers, which I keep. I am delighted to have found it.
Regards,
Barry Parr