I felt badly the way I skipped over a life that meant so much to me, so I will try to make it up to him.  Joel was a very complex person, his brother said his first love was Gloria L, because of her fur coat.  When I started going out with him in our Junior year, she told me that Joel was the only boy she knew that if a girl hit him, he hit her back.  That was Joel, but he gave me great kids and a home that I love dearly.

We moved here in the fall of '67.  We had looked at the house in spring, with four apple trees surrounding it in bloom.  But it wasn't until the fall that we decided to buy it.  Maria was in Kindergarten in South Avenue in a trailer, the school was so full.  Red Hook was the best school in the area, and that made the difference.  The first bank denied our loan, "structurally unsafe" and the price started to fall.  Uncle Phil came to Tivoli, put a line on the west wall and said the same thing.  The price dropped to $8500 and we found a bank that could loan us the money.  We had the whole family here for Christmas, and Joel went into the cellar and jacked up the floor with beams, so we wouldn't have a family falling through the floor.  That was his first house project.  He put a marble on the kitchen floor and we watched it roll across the room.  And so, with metal beams, new wood, he made the floor safe and even.  Then he took a little room that Paul was using and started on our bedroom.  He parked his truck outside the window, and with a chute in place, and a diaper over my face, I threw the old horse hair lathe down the chute.  With bare walls, he started, adding a new window, and making closets out of the little room.  Wait, I think he might have done the kitchen before that.  I was pregnant with Sabra and he put shelves on the open porch for the pots and pans.  The saw was kept in the kitchen and Paul would play with his cars in the saw dust.  He was speed racer and I was Trixie.  Joel found wainscoating in an old barn somehow, and that is what he used to make the cabinets.  He had me stand where the sink was to see how high to make the counters to match my size.  Then he enclosed the porch.  I think in 1970 or '71, because Sabra was in a playpen outside watching him while he hammered to Johnny Cash music.  Then with the porch done, the next May he tore the kids bedroom apart, and the three older ones had to sleep on the porch.  It only fit two beds, not Maria's so she had to beg every night to sleep with someone. CPS would be after us today if that was going on.

And then it was the kids room, followed by the addition when they no longer could all fit four to one room.  So you see, he worked hard and long for this house, for my home and I told him that in the last letter I wrote to him.  I had typed it out, thinking it would be easier for him to read than my handwriting, and then before putting it in the envelope, I wrote "thank you for all the work you did on this house.  I love my home." I hope he understood.