Editor’s note: This is another column in Bill Boyd’s new series, “The Way It Was,” about growing up in Marysville. Bill continues to work with the Union County Historical Society to obtain information for his stories.
–––
When World War II ended in 1945, and veterans began returning home from all over the world, there was a housing shortage like this country had never before experienced.
In Marysville, for example, there had been no new home construction in the past four years. So all those returning Vets and their families were hard pressed to find housing. My sister’s family found temporary space in a house on West Sixth Street.
Then one Sunday afternoon, we got a visit from my cousin, Duane Lockwood, from Columbus. He and his dad had built quite a few homes in North Columbus before the war. My dad was telling him about the housing shortage in Marysville, and how my sister’s family couldn’t find a place to live. As they talked, Duane looked at the barn behind our house and said, “Why don’t you build an apartment there, in the top of your barn?”
My dad thought that sounded like a good idea, so the following Sunday Duane went to the barn and took measurements. A couple weeks later, my cousin returned with a set of plans for a two-bedroom apartment. A few small changes were made that day, and within a week or so, my parents were talking with a carpenter to do the job.
Getting the materials was often a challenge. There were shortages in almost everything, from copper pipe, to lighting fixtures. My dad made a lot of trips to Columbus to get materials. It was almost like a full-time job.
We tried to help those carpenters as much is possible. Much of the living area was finished with knotty pine, so I spent days sanding, staining and finishing the wood panels. Our whole family pitched in to do a lot of the “grunt” work, you know, carrying scrap lumber to the junk pile, and things like that!
The work was coming to an end sometime in mid Fall. Just about everything had been completed, except the gas furnace. You wouldn’t believe how hard it was to find a gas furnace. We waited and waited. My sister’s family moved in just as winter was on the doorstep, and a gas furnace just wasn’t going to happen. So an oil furnace was installed temporarily. A year or so later a gas furnace became available, to finish the construction of that postwar apartment. That’s pretty much the way it was with a lot of postwar construction.
Now let me tell you a little side story about when we built that apartment. The day before construction started, I took a flashlight to the haymow for one last look. I hadn’t been up there in years. It was dark and empty. Then I spotted a small object on the floor in a dark corner. Almost instantly I knew it was. It was the skeleton of a mouse.
You see, around five years earlier, when I was nine years old, I bought a white mouse from a kid on Cherry Street. I think I paid 10 cents for it. I brought it home and took it into our kitchen, where my mother and sister were working. I was thrilled, and I held that mouse in my hand to show it to them. My sister took one look at that little mouse, and then she screamed. My mother told me to get rid of that little mouse, so I took it to the haymow and let it go.
I went back a few times to play with that mouse, but I couldn’t find it. So five years later, a day or two before construction began, I buried what was left of that little mouse in the garden behind our barn. I think that was a nice resting place for that mouse.
Those wishing to contact Bill Boyd can e-mail him at
williamboyd514@gmail.com