Why I'm more comfortable in old houses

Because I'm old?.. ha ha...

This will be a little self indulgent, but it's my blog. If you're hoping for some insights into global geo-politics, might as well skip this one.

When my folks arrived on these shores in '56 we started at the bottom. My father's first job in Canada was shovelling coal at the Kloepfer Coal Company. With a hand shovel.

That was when coal was still the number one home heating fuel, not yet eclipsed by furnace oil. Just to frame it for you, the milkman still came by in a horse-drawn chariot in those days.

After the coal-shovelling gig Dad got on delivering lumber for Stewart Lumber. That's another iconic Guelph brand that has gone the way of Kloepfer Coal and so many others.

There used to be an outfit called J.P. Hammill and Sons, which made denim jeans. They made them right there in Guelph back in the day.

That was the pre-free-trade era, obviously.

After a brief spell in the lumber truck, Dad got on at a factory. Omark. They made saw-chains for chain-saws.

In the overall scheme of things Omark was a rung below the top-tier industrial plants in Guelph at the time, but several rungs above J.P. Hammill and the like. Back in the day, every immigrant (and everybody else too) understood the concept of rungs.

Dad held that Omark job for ten years. I know that because I recall he got a watch from the company for ten years of service. A half-decent watch, I might add. Couple of rungs above a Timex, for sure.

During those years we lived in a succession of old fixer-uppers, on Neeve Street, Derry Street, and eventually in Elora, first house on the wrong side of the tracks as you're going into town, except the tracks aren't there anymore.

Those were all houses that had challenges, but they were also houses where I felt safe, comfortable, and happy. Life was simple, and simple comforts were all you needed.

The experts who get paid to study this stuff say that your personality is pretty much fixed during the first five years of your life. What you became then is what you're always gonna be.

Till I was eleven or twelve years old Dad went to work in a factory. It never occurred to me to aspire to anything other than one of the top-rung jobs in the factory.

Then Dad, not long after he got that watch, got a real estate license, and that sort of kicked the entire rung system off its moorings.


Elora was the greatest place. In a winter storm we'd get snow-drifts in the kitchen. One Sunday Mom accidentally killed a mouse that happened to be scurrying by the door as we got home from church. Got squished between the floor and the bottom of the door.

But I was happy there.

That's why I'm more comfortable in old houses.