How I solved the mystery of the rickety home

When we bought our house in 1978, there was nothing particularly distinguished about it, except that it was on a rare double lot. It had a big kitchen, but the other rooms were cramped and had no flow to them.

Anywhere you set down a marble, it would roll toward the center of the house, where someone had cut in a set of basement stairs without supporting the joists afterward. Those were just hanging out, open-ended, with two stories of house on top of them. My husband, Dave, immediately set to work shoring up the place. His daily horrified exclamations were audible from the street. Wall studs were put in randomly or not at all. Windows were hung, literally, with no bracing below them.

So when a tiny old lady showed up out front, snapping photos with an Instamatic, and told us her father had built the house in 1906, we invited her in. She snapped a bony grip on the kitchen counter and peered up at Dave. The old grapevine was planted in 1915, Mrs. Kraxberger said. The kitchen was the original house, and until her father added another three rooms, the kids lived in a tent in the front yard. 

“And do you know,” she crackled, beaming with pride, “he didn’t know a thing about construction?”

It is a tribute to Dave’s finer qualities, which include courtesy and respect for his elders as well as building skills, that he merely smiled, if rigidly.

But now we knew a real family had built this place and thrived in it, and an old woman’s face was still bright with the memory of it. We still didn’t know much about them, not even their names. Mrs. Kraxberger promised us photographs, but we never saw her again.

It struck me then how fast the past gets away from us, how easily our history is erased. What doesn’t live on in memory ceases to exist. We can’t even know what we’ve lost. Mrs. Kraxberger gave us a tantalizing piece of the puzzle, but she was gone. 

Years later, I decided to see what I could find out about our house. Maybe I could color in the past. Maybe, I thought, I could even put a name to the gentleman responsible for vexing my husband, which is usually my job.

Soon I fetched up the name of the only resident of our house in 1930, a Miss Jane Farrelly. She was also listed as a member of the Mazamas mountaineering club in 1918. There weren’t a lot of women doing that in those days. Miss Farrelly may have started by climbing nearby Mount Hood. Probably in a skirt.

Now I was in deep. Fact is, I liked Miss Jane. Ultimately, the internet surrendered the rest of the family, including a mother, Anna Agnes Boylen Farrelly, and a father: Peter Philip Farrelly, the clueless but determined builder of our miraculously still-standing home.

They made a lot of little Farrellys, at least nine, according to the 1910 census, including Florence – our Mrs. Kraxberger. The family was still living in Pennsylvania when Mr. Farrelly saw an advertisement for land in Portland, Oregon, and purchased his Western dream. He snapped up our two lots, bless him forever, and headed out to new territory with nothing but that dream and way too much confidence in his building skills.

Why do I care? This house has been in only two families in 117 years. The future is opaque. But without remembrance, the past is equally obscure. So I throw a line and a hook into times gone by, hoping it snags on something.

Then I hold on. Like a mountaineer.

I have been rewarded with the resurrection and preservation of someone else’s memories. The past has developed warmth and texture: the cheerful ruckus of all those little Farrellys, their noses pressed against our wavy-glass windows. Mother Farrelly, keeping her worries to herself, I hope, as her oldest daughter takes on a tall mountain instead of a husband. Peter Philip Farrelly, doing the best he can for the family that keeps on growing. I’ve discovered I’m proud of him too. And I owe him a debt of gratitude for the two lots, the old grapevine, and the flowering cherry. 

The lots are still intact, Mr. Farrelly. The neighbor kid burned down your cherry, but the grapevine’s looking fine.