Houses that Eli Built

     Eli's most important career was as a carpenter, and he was being proud of being a finish carpenter--let others do the framing, he would do the cabinets. Jon, David, Sam and I have figured out that he built at least these buildings:  In the Englewood neighborhood of Coos Bay,"The Joint," his tavern; the house of Johnnie and Evelyn two doors down from the Joint; the house of Gene and Kathleen three doors down from the Joint;   Thompson's tavern, which had a little grocery associated with it, plus apartments along the back;   the houses of Vake and Milly and that Eli and Sofia lived in at the end of Minnesota Street in Coos Bay;  and the Chandler's River House up the Coos River, called "Alderbrook" (working on that one with other people).
   Vake told that while various immigrant carpenters were working at Chandler's, they would read newspapers in their native languages during their lunch breaks.  As an experiment, they picked up each other's papers and read them aloud. Eli read Italian,  and he was understood, but he could not understand what he was reading. Somebody else read Finnish, reading phonetically, and Eli understood, but the reader couldn't understand a word that he was reading.
     One of the carpenters carried some stinky cheese in his lunch.  A cat sniffed the wrapper, and tried to bury it.
    Vake once said that Eli designed all his houses alike--but we've all seen many design-build contractors who do exactly that. Now, all counters and doorknobs are 36" high. I was impressed with the house that Eli built for himself and Sofia because the counters and cabinets were low; like my short grandma Sofia, I could reach them all even before I topped out at 5'2". "You put the doorknob yoost about as high as your pecker," Eli told Vake.
     Eli's specialty was building winding staircases, built so that a staircase could fit in a small vertical column, and would form a neat storage area beneath.Vake doubted that the staircases would be lawful today: they wound around the chimney, but also, in the turning sections, the stair treads were narrow in the corners. Stair-steps today are not supposed to have treads that are narrow in any part.
   The picture above is the house of Eli and Sophia on Minnesota Street. To the left toward the back of the picture is the roof of the house of Vake and Milly. The nearest building is the garage that Eli almost burned down. Yellowjackets settled under the peak of the roof, and one stung Eli on the top of his bald head. He decided to smoke them out, so ignited some rags on top of a pole that he held next to the yellowjacket nest. Unfortunately, the garage ignited, and the fire department had to respond. No substantial damage resulted.
    Eli's house was one of his typical houses. The photo above looks like it may have been taken after Sofia had died and Eli had moved to Florence. The shrubbery is overgrown; he tended to keep things clear-cut, "like a Finnish logger," Vake said, although  Eli allowed  two large camelia bushes to grows in front of the house.
     The front of the house is to the right. A partially enclosed porch opened directly into the living room. To the right was a bedroom. At the far side of the living room from the door, a wall separated the living room from the kitchen. The living room was furnished with a classical overstuffed 1930s style red mohair sofa and matching easy chair, plus a wing chair for Eli. He kept a small desk there (one he had built), and a coffee table  holding copies of "Suomi," a Finnish-language news and picture magazine like "Life" or "Look." Eventually, in the 1960s, a television came in.  The pictures in the magazine were all black and white, and featured officials in caps with ear flaps and coats that covered them from neck to ankle, so they all looked very dreary. I think there was a small woodburning parlor stove in the middle of the wall between the living room, and the kitchen beyond. The door to the kitchen was to the left of the center of the wall, in front of Eli's wing chair.
    Beyond the living room was the dining area in a corner of the kitchen. On the wall on the other side of the the living room was both a wood-burning "trash burner" with two cooking burners on top, and an electric range. Uncle John sold appliances at his Western Auto Hardware Store, and wanted his mother to have a new electric range, but she would have none of that unless she could keep her wood burner. She knew how to cook on it. Coffee stayed hot, and bread rose, on the top of the wood burner. The Finn coffee pot was copper lined with tin.
     Next to the stove was the door up the winding stairway to the attic.
     On the far side of the kitchen from the living room were the kitchen sink and cabinets.  To the right of the kitchen cabinets was the back door, and right of that was the master bedroom. The bathroom was tucked into the corner formed by the master bedroom and the back porch pantry, and had doors from each.  It was unheated and always felt ice cold, but it was a good design:  You could come in muddy from the garden and use the bathroom without traipsing through the house.
     At the  open end of the pantry was a little platform where Sofia would stand to reel in her clothes lines from across the back yard, and from which she hung the laundry to dry. Milly would laugh at the sight of Eli's night cap and long night gown. Patty, Sandy, and I crowded onto that platform once, and Sandy got pushed off. She split her forehead when she landed on the sidewalk below, and I think she got stitches.
    The entry to the basement was from the outside, at the rear of the house, and was a daylight basement where Eli did woodwork and Sofia worked her loom.  
   Upstairs, the attic contained just one long room running from one end of the house to the other, with windows on each end, but the sides were sealed off with storage areas that also helped insulate the house.
     The house was tidy and snug and finished and complete. There was no sense of "bringing the outdoors in." For that reason, I have felt that the design was very old-style European.
   At the side of the  back yard was Eli's garden for logan berries, red potatoes and strawberries. Beyond the yard was a woodshed, roofed but open on the side, where Eli stacked fire wood. And beyond the woodshed was the forest. A narrow trail led out into the woods where Eli and Sofia threw their garbage. That would be a bottle-hunter's paradise today!