Faith Steed Howarth

[How they got the house at 1430 Blaine Avenue, Salt Lake City, Utah 84105]

Well, we'd lived in several little apartments since we'd been married. Most of them close to town. Then we move up on - near the bench as we called it [East bench of Salt Lake City, Utah] 'cause that's where my home had been, up on 15th East. My husband came home one day and asked me if I wanted to come look at a house that he had found which was for sale. We went up and looked at it. It was an Blaine Avenue not very many blocks from where my mother lived and I liked it very much, but it was in quite a raw condition. The young couple had bought it but couldn't keep up the payments.

It was quite a good buy. You know, as good as anything at that time. So, we took it. The lot was just a regular lot. But, for us that was enough at that time. But, as we lived there, we did expand the house, build new garages and bought three-quarters of another lot of land. So that eventually we had a very nice little place there.

So, as we got through and got the little home up there. Especially after we bought the three-quarters [extra lot] more so that we had all that space. You know, it was ugly. There was this hole where they started to build a house. Well, Daddy put the fish pond in that, you know. A little deck came out from the garage - at -at the back of the garage. There was only a distance of about this far between the edge of that and the beginning of the circle of the pond. We had those little fish in there. It was fun to watch them.

We papered our own house[Referring to Blaine Avenue]. We painted our own house. We did all the work. He did a lot of it, you know. I would tell him what I'd like and he would do it. The cute little bedroom of Pamela's where he built that whole wall of shelves and cupboards - all so nicely done. He loved the house. He did his jewelry and such in the basement where it was warm in the winter. He got awfully good with the jewelery.