Where I grew up in the big city it was considered bad form to live in your parents' neighborhood after you got married. Where my husband grew up in a rural area, you had to be careful of what you said because so many people were related to each other, and they knew everyone else's business. It was small town entertainment.
When we built our house, it was about 1/2 mile down the road from my in-laws. I felt desperate to establish ourselves independently. There was no legal agreement; my husband just went to work as he always had, and the work was hard and physical. My father in law was headed eventually for a hip replacement, so he was unable to do a lot of hard physical labor. The milking parlor was a wreck. The cows were all different breeds, and they were still using milk cans, siphon tubes and bucking bales by hand.
The place wouldn't have lasted much longer; it wasn't paying its own way, and the free labor of the six oldest children was coming to an end. There was a change of life baby who was one year old, and she wasn't going to be much help for years. So there was my husband and his limping father. We were paid enough every month to cover our mortgage with $20 left over. Fortunately we had enough to eat, and we didn't get sick or injured.
We paid someone to frame the house, with a down payment earned by my husband during a good year of leasing someone else's land before we were married. I wired it for electricity, and my husband put up sheet rock and did the plumbing. We hired the laying of the cinderblock basement to two retired bachelor brothers, and got a loan to put in a well. As a wedding present, my in laws paid off the mortgage for the one acre we lived on. We hired the roof done and moved in. It took us another 25 years to finish it. My father in law built a set of stairs going into the basement, and my brother in law helped me put in the electrical panel. My sisters in law helped install insulation in the walls.
I went to work at the local county court, and later for the community college.
No one would talk to me about finances, including my husband.
When we built our house, it was about 1/2 mile down the road from my in-laws. I felt desperate to establish ourselves independently. There was no legal agreement; my husband just went to work as he always had, and the work was hard and physical. My father in law was headed eventually for a hip replacement, so he was unable to do a lot of hard physical labor. The milking parlor was a wreck. The cows were all different breeds, and they were still using milk cans, siphon tubes and bucking bales by hand.
The place wouldn't have lasted much longer; it wasn't paying its own way, and the free labor of the six oldest children was coming to an end. There was a change of life baby who was one year old, and she wasn't going to be much help for years. So there was my husband and his limping father. We were paid enough every month to cover our mortgage with $20 left over. Fortunately we had enough to eat, and we didn't get sick or injured.
We paid someone to frame the house, with a down payment earned by my husband during a good year of leasing someone else's land before we were married. I wired it for electricity, and my husband put up sheet rock and did the plumbing. We hired the laying of the cinderblock basement to two retired bachelor brothers, and got a loan to put in a well. As a wedding present, my in laws paid off the mortgage for the one acre we lived on. We hired the roof done and moved in. It took us another 25 years to finish it. My father in law built a set of stairs going into the basement, and my brother in law helped me put in the electrical panel. My sisters in law helped install insulation in the walls.
I went to work at the local county court, and later for the community college.
No one would talk to me about finances, including my husband.
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