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Village Squire, 1979-04, Page 42P.S. The saps are running BY KEITH ROULSTON It's happening all over the land. As the sap rises in the maple trees, so the saps rise. As the buds fill out on the trees, so the budding enthusiasm swells on the part of people who dream of finding a little place in the country and fixing up the old house into a private paradise. It's the great Canadian dream: that house in the country. It flourishes particularly in the cities where anything with more than 50 square feet of grass is like owning an estate and where simply. investing in a house can be a decision akin to the financing of the Canadian Pacific Railway. Recently in the London Free Press an old school mate of mine, Joe Matyas, wrote a book review on Harrowsmith magazine's The Harrowsmith Reader and found that the vast majority of the magazines more than 100,000 subscribers live in the big city. Many don't even own land at all, even though the magazine sells the pleasures of the back7to-the-land. Only about 10 per cent really own land in the country and work it, in any. way. What the magazine is then, is a dream medium. Itis today's investment for the dream of tomorrow. People buy the magazine and feel that they're taking the first step to their country estate by taking in all the tidbits of information the magazine gives about homesteading. But this time every year a certain number of those dreamers put their dreams into reality. They drive out in the country and visit the small town real estate offices and look for country properties. Most of them want a few acres with an old farm house. All of them want a pleasant stream running past their back door. (A few end up with an unpleasant stream running through their basement). A few of us will make a purchase. 1 say "us" because a few years ago we joined the group. We exchanged our tiny cramped house in the village for a big two-storey, spacious job in the country on four acres (that's what the ad said but of course it's really only 3.6) of land. That was our first mistake. If people really knew what they were getting into when they buy an old house, they'd never get into it. Unfortunately, or fortunately depending on your viewpoint, 40 Village Squire, April 1979 they don't and even if someone sets out to tell them, they won't believe it. Now we knew to a certain extent what we were getting into. We walked into it with out eyes wide open. We'd done a lot of fixing in our house in town to make it habitable when some people told us it was ready for the wrecker's hammer. We weren't about to get into another major rebuilding process. Not like our neighbours who bought a house that most people would have written off and in five years have donated all their spare time and all their spare cash towards making it come to life again. No. we weren't going to do that. We toured the house and, saw that a good deal of work had already been done to the place so we wouldn't have to make any major investments for a while. We didn't either. Oh of course there was the new chimney we had to put up a few months after we moved in to save us from either freezing to death or burning the house down in our first winter. Then there was the water heater that threatened to explode and was replaced. Other than that. we didn't do much the first couple of years. We lived with the wallpaper we hated. We lived with the ugly linoleum in the kitchen. We stored up our energy for the assault ahead. All that had to change when we decided to move our office out to the big summer kitchen out back. That fateful decision has kept us building ever since. We had to fix the roof before we could put in the wiring. We had to put in the wiring before we could put in the insulation. We had to put in the insulation before we could put on the wallboard and the wallboard before we could put in the rug and the rug before we could put in the heaters and so it went until the room is now at least habitable after over a year of working. Not finished, mind you, but habitable. °Having accomplished this, the wife then decided it was time to start working on the rest of the house: to make it our own. (Actually with the amount of money we've spent I think it belongs more to the electrician, the carpenter, the building supply company and the paint and wallpaper dealer). So last fall the construction moved into the main house. It culminated last month in a decision to sand the old hardwood floors, to bring out all that natural beauty. Unfortunately there's a heck of a lot of unnatural pain that goes into bringing out that natural beauty. First it was the din that threatened permanent deafness. The noise was so bad you couldn't hear the telephone ring unless you were standing within two feet of it. Then there was the dust that made air pollution in Hamilton look like clean country air. I keep getting this feeling my lungs are now gigantic bags of sawdust. Of course the dust didn't all go in the lungs. It floated through every crack and crevice in the house to sit in thick heaps in every corner and ledge in the house. It only took three days to do the job. It only seems like it took three months. I've come to the conclusion too that this kind of work only really looks good in somebody else's house. There you can only see the over all beauty of the finished work. When I look at my own house all I can sec is the long hours of work that went into it and all the little imperfections that resulted. Somehow all the fun is gone. I have sworn I will not take on another major project for a while. Unfortunately. I know I won't stick to the promise. There's work to be done in the living room yet. There's papering and painting to be done and ceilings to be fixed. And if the day should ever come when that's all done without something else having fallen apart. there's all that beautiful ancient woodwork that should be stripped. That's enough to make a sane man quake and run off to a nice modern. no -work -to-do apartment. But insanity runs high among those who move to old houses in the country. LO OK THI-. (,I 11 II i\ I ..KI I -PS ON (;I\ lN(, JEWELLERY KIT FORM - MAKE I1 YOURSELF CUSTOM MADE - AT LOW COST STONES ARE NATURAL. MINERALS IMPORTED FROM ALL OVER THE WORLD. NO GLASS OR PLASTIC. f-vt', Carnelian Quarte, (,arnet, iVlonnstOn( 'lade, Op)ill, and Int, Hobe Rings, Pendants, Beads, Necklaces, Belt Buckles, Bola Ties, Bracelets, etc. VISIT...MINI MINERAL MUSEUM - NO CHARGE. cLjit rev ems 51 ST. DAVID ST., GODERICH, ONT. NIA 1L4 523-9972 .