The House On 9 Southshore Road

Marie’s boys want me to tell stories about the house on 9 Southshore Road. It is kind of an interesting house, because of it’s history and some of the antics that the boys did at that house.

The house cost $3500.00. It was a small house, but had four bedrooms. Marie and her husband were both working at the time of the purchase. When they bought it in those days there were no “discovery” papers, but they were assured that everything was fine that went with the house.
In February, Marie couldn’t get the furnace to light. She finally got it lit, but it went out. Anyone that has lived in Massachusetts knows that it is cold there in February. Marie called the furnace repair people and they discovered a hole in the heating chamber the size of a grapefruit. She said she was very lucky not to have blown the house and herself up. A new furnace would cost two thousand dollars, almost as much as they paid for the house.
She went to the bank which had an affiliation with her church and they put the cost of a new furnace in with her mortgage and it only raised her house payments six dollars. That made her payments forty five dollars a month. Wouldn’t we all like house payments of forty five dollars a month, however, those payments were in times where the paychecks were a tenth of what they are now also.
To get the loan for the furnace, the papers had to go through a board of directors similar to now a days, and that took two weeks. Two weeks of being cold and having children. I think she said she was getting sewing done for her daughter’s wedding at that time also. This sounds like where the phrase come from, “when it rains it storms.” I might have just made that up!
All the boys tell me about the terrible snow storms they had when they lived there. The stories vary from brother to brother, but in the end they were all full of mischief.
I am going to tell this story my own way and it will have a little truth from all three of the boys. They had had several snow storms of over two to three feet at a time. They had over six feet in one snow storm one time. Any way, snow makes some people upset because they can’t get out of the house to get to work, and other people think, what the heck, let’s have some fun. I have been told a story like I say with different versions of the boys, tying two ladders together so that they were long enough to get to the top of the roof. The reason for doing this was serious, his mother was concerned that the roof would cave in from the weight of the snow. Well, work was done, what would you do, if you were teenagers with a lot of snow to have fun in and your work was done. Jump! Yes, first one then another, then the one that didn’t spread his arms out and had to be dug out in order to get out of the snow bank. That story has been told and told and told, and always with a hearty laugh.