Ed's House

My grandfather Edward Metzker built his own house in 1948 in Oregon Township, Lucas County, Ohio. The area was once a farm, but the location was within walking distance of his parents’ home, and the rental properties where he lived with my grandmother Vivian and Dad for several years. I don’t know how much of the actual construction of the house my grandfather did, but I expected he did quite a bit of it, working evenings and weekends. He would have hired specialty services, like masonry. It is likely he did the electrical work himself, as he was an electrician.

The exterior of the new house was brick, more brown than red. I say it’s one and a half-stories, because the second floor had lower ceilings with the slanted roof making the space seem smaller. Three was also a full basement. Facing the house from the street, the driveway was on the right (or North side).

Three steps led to a small front porch that had a roof. Upon entering the house itself, there was a small foyer with closets on each side. This opened into a large living room that ran from the doorway to the driveway end of the house. A large picture window faced front, and on the interior wall opposite my grandmother hung a large mirror. A working fireplace, more for show than for heat was in the center of the driveway wall.

The living room led into a dining room with French doors that opened onto a back patio, which also had a full roof. During the summer, screened panels would be retrieved from the basement and create a cozy outdoor room that we always called the “screened in porch.” The dining room and small kitchen were behind the living room. The kitchen was a square room in the back corner with two outside walls. A small table pressed against the driveway wall. It would basically fit four when it was pulled out from the wall, but when being used, made for very little room to maneuver through the kitchen.

In the doorway between the living room and the kitchen was a small hallway that headed back toward the front of the house. In the front was the master bedroom, in the middle was a bathroom and in the back was a second bedroom. The second bedroom was my father’s room until my Uncle Larry was born. At that time, my father moved upstairs.

Opposite the entrance to the first floor bedroom area was a stairway, separated from the first floor by a door. The stairs were narrow and step, and ended on the driveway side of the house. At the top of the stairs to the immediate right was an open room with a closet on one side. From the time could remember, the room had a desk and a combination couch/day bed. When my grandfather first built the house, however, this was the room in which he spent time as a ham radio operator.

On the other side of the stairs was a hallway, taking a person back in the same direction and into a large bedroom. This was my father’s and uncle’s room. While it had a large floor space, it had a low ceiling. There was a half-bath above the first floor bathroom and a narrow section that led to the front of the house. All there was room for in that section was three three-foot high bookcases.

The back door was on the driveway side of the house between the kitchen and the living room. When a person entered, the flow led directly down the stairs to the basement and into a large family room. At the far end was a set of built-in cupboards, floor to waist-high. There was also a drawer with a turntable—a built-in record player. These cupboards ran the full length of the room. At each end, a bookcase, facing inward, rose to the ceiling. Opposite the cupboard wall, beside the stairway, was a built-in bar, complete with sink and full-size refrigerator. Above the refrigerator, my grandfather had also built in at least a 20-gallon fish tank (which from the time I could remember until shortly before his death) had tropical fish. When we were children, my brother and I also had 10-gallon tropical fish tanks. Jeff, being older, got his first, and I threw a ruckus to get my own. I started with guppies, but eventually had my own tank. (Later, that tank would house my hamsters.)

There were two other rooms in my grandfather’s basement. The first was a large multi-purpose room that one entered at the bottom of the stairs. It was at the front of the house, and ran the full length. Upon entering, on the left wall was the furnace, on the inside wall was the laundry area—washing machine, dryer, and large tub. There was also a clothes chute. On the opposite wall was my grandfather’s workbench. In the middle of the room was the family pool table. This could be converted to a ping-pong table by covering it with the two halves of the tabletop. Another door opposite the one that led into the multi-purpose room led into a cellar. We always called it the “fruit room.” This is where my grandmother kept her home and purchased canned goods, potatoes, onions, apples, etc. Although it would not have originally, by the time I came along, the room also had a large freezer.

My favorite part of the house was its milk box, a cabinet between the interior and exterior of the house near the back door. On the outside, the milkman could leave his products early in the morning, undisturbed. My grandmother could open from the inside to retrieve the items when she was ready. A latch on the inside was all that locked the milk box. The inside of the box was insulated, and it was about 12 square inches. In later years, they had Charlie’s chips and pretzels delivered, but I don’t recall that these were left in the milk box.

The narrow driveway started in the street and ran beside the entire length of the house to a one-car garage at the back of the property. It was built for smaller cars, but fit either a Cadillac or Lincoln Town Car (my grandfather’s automobiles of choice in his later years). This garage was made of the same brick as the house. From the time I remember, it had an automatic door opener. We operated it from the kitchen, holding the remote near the back window, so that the inside apparatus could read the signal.