I’m going to piggy-back on yesterday’s post remembering some joy, and take this opportunity (and it won’t be the last) to gush a bit about what wonderful parents I was bless to have been born to.

See… they weren’t only loving and attentive to my needs as their son. They weren’t only forward thinking and aware of the latest in brand new and modern ideas regarding life, education and parenting. And they weren’t only respectful of the traditions they were transcending, augmenting and moving beyond. All that and… my parents were really good at planning. Sure they made mistakes and my Mom would be the first to point these out. But looking back at the path my folks took when they moved us to Rochester in 1962, my adult self sees a pretty darn good plan all along.

How they built the house on 16th Ave while living in an apartment. When we moved into that house in 1963, they also purchased a forty acre plot of land that we would move to in 1972. Dad worked at Kellogg Jr. High School while John Adams was being built and after that first school year, at the job where he would remain for the next twenty years, they sold the house in town and moved us all into the little one bedroom house on the property and began building the main house there.

It was fifteen miles north of town. The land surrounded the buildings of a small family farm that was over a hundred years old. The larger fields that had once been part of the farm had been sold many years before and my father bought the place just after the farmer had died. His widow moved to a rest home and Dad got the entire place for $20,000.

Not bad.

It was a bit hard at first, the six of us in that tiny hundred-year-old one bedroom farm house. Especially that winter. The house had an old oil heater in the living room where us kids slept (but Dad limited its use to save fuel) and a very old, cast iron cook stove in the kitchen that we had to start a fire in every morning to have any real warmth at all.

But the summer after that, Dad completed the three bedroom walk out basement part of the main house and we all moved into that.

For at least a year (perhaps two) we then rented out the old house and right now my memory is a complete blank about our tenant. Perhaps I’ll update this after I talk with Mom about it sometime. Anyway… when the tenant left, Bruce and I moved into that house for our last few years before we each went off into the world on our own and in our own way. Dad finished the main house by building a second floor but he didn’t do that until Bruce and I were long gone. Heh… I was a bit miffed about the fact that Stacy and Clark got to live in the much nicer, much bigger complete family home Dad had planed from the start and I didn’t but… at least I had a room waiting for me when, on two occasions I returned to live at home after failing at planing my own life. Hmmm… more on that later. Perhaps.

Another good planing thing my folks did was to sell two five acre plots in the corner of the property nearest the road. This helped Dad pay off the mortgage so by the time he would retire in 1991, they owned the place free and clear and would eventually sell it for quite a large profit that ended up paying for all (or most) of the expenses of their old age.

Again, there were parts of this plan that could have been done better and sure, they made some mistakes but… dang!

Good plan.

More stories to come now that I have laid out this bit of context. Then this all will certainly be…

To be be continued…