BELFAST (Nov 25, 2005): I paid off my mortgage this morning, a milestone I hadn't expected to reach for another three years. It wasn't a lot of money, a bit less than $6,000. But the home I bought for $33,000 in 1981 and paid back at the rate of $395.27 per month is now mine. Hallelujah.
Margo and I moved into the house, long owned by Wimpy and Jean Warman and more recently by David Hutchings, in the early spring 24 years ago. A crew of friends — Flint Whitman, Steve Brennan, Warren Greeley and Greg Stafford — had just completed a quick renovation job, and evenings were spent scraping and painting so it would be livable, homey.
Progress was slow. I was editor of The Republican Journal at the time and making about $350 a week, minus child support and mortgage payments. But it was a blast. Our own place, right on the river, a whole life in front of us.
Having moved from the country, we brought some of our rural ways with us. The first winter we heated the house with a wood stove I'd bought years before, and a wood/gas cookstove. It got cold during the day when we were at work, and colder at night when the fires dimmed. Frozen water pipes were common, and once the drain froze, sparking a new approach to heating that lasted almost 20 years.
Joe Mosher's home in Northport had burned, so I bought his wood furnace, stuck it in the cellar and had our friend Peter Roy surround it with a sheet metal plenum and the required duct work. A chicken barn fan motor pushed the hot air upstairs into our living space, and we had no more frozen pipes. We now have an oil furnace as back-up, but dry wood, piled neatly in the cellar, is still our main fuel, and Joe's furnace still works fine.
We have tweaked Flint's kitchen a bit and rearranged things to reflect our solitary lifestyle, a change from the days when three kids were about. Last year I bought two comfortable couches at a secondhand store, and we placed them beneath two banks of windows that let the sun in whenever it's shining. Lying on a comfortable couch with a book or magazine toward the end of a day is better than anything except watching the Red Sox.
When we moved, in the land behind and to the south of the house was steep and overgrown. It took me 20 minutes to mow the tiny lawn along the road, which gave me plenty of time for more important chores. But I wasn't satisfied. We needed a garden spot, places to plant shrubs, and though I didn't realize it then, a bocce pitch. So it wasn't long before the back lot was flattened out a bit and terraced, usable at last. We keep expanding the cultivated area and have big plans for 2006.
In 1987, with three kids crowded into a house suitable for one, we added on a living room and upstairs master bedroom. Flint and Chris Muldoon built the addition, and I thank them most every day. I needed to go to the bank for money to pay them, so I hired Randy Dominic to appraise the property. Six years after I bought and substantially renovated the house and landscaped the grounds, he placed the value at $41,000. I might have argued, but that was exactly what I needed to pay the builders, so I let it pass. I may have shown the appraisal to the tax assessor, though, as property values were suddenly booming, even on the East Side.
The expanded house has accommodated us well. Three children spent all or part of their adolescences amongst us, with occasional strains and many pleasures. They brought the men who would become their husbands to sample Margo's cooking and life along the Passy. And now they bring the grandkids.
I mention these facets of our life because they speak to what a home is. It is a physical thing first, I guess, walls and halls and stairs and furnishings that confine and help define the lives within. I like to visit our kids, and I always note that the second floors of their places are toasty warm, unlike where they were brought up.
A house is also an investment, more so now than 24 years ago. My mortgage payments, taxes and insurance took a big part of my income for a quarter-century, but it is still, I think, the best use I've ever made of money.
Margo's laptop computer is often open on our dining room table playing an ever-changing slide show of family adventures. Our house is a backdrop for many of them, kids and grandkids and even us older folks occasionally caught in the succession of moments that make a life.
Today it's all mine at last, a testament to perseverance, stability and good luck. If things go as planned, those dreary payments will be transformed into new gardens, some exterior paint, maybe a dock. The mortgage may be gone, but the life of the house goes on.
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