A Parlour for a Plague

is your property purchase in mexico? Ive not been following too closely

No. Here in Austin. I have the Mexico house and went there for a week or 2 in Feb. right before COVID hit.

I then put my house here on the market, got a buyer, found a new place of my own own here.
Then COVID hit, they backed out, so I had to back out.

My ultimate goal is to live in Austin 6 or 7 months over The winters, and Mexico 5 or 6 months over the summer.
So i’ll have warm, not hot Summers in the high dessert, and relatively mild winters in Austin.

I was probably thinking farther back than Century 21.

Americans used to build their own houses with an ax and hammer.
I’ve gone soft myself, I used power tools and precut lumber.

The Colorado county I’m in doesn’t even require a building permit. You can build any damn thing you want any way you want. That probably won’t last long though. They have started requiring septic tank and electrical permits.

I wonder how they wire those hay bail houses that the tree huggers favor?

So did people all over the world.

Thank heavens we've evolved beyond that.

I'd never want to live in a house I'd built.

Yeah, and I'd really want to build a house that "won't last long" and didn't have an electrical permit and inspection.
That's smart.

I perfer a home with indoor plumbing personally.

Human evolution - Survival of the fattest.

Really just one, certainly two, generations ago it was not all that uncommon for people to hand dig foundations and basements by hand. My husband's grandfather and uncle started a business that way.

I'm with Chai though, I like indoor plumbing. Even at the "cottage," though that was a relatively modern addition to where I am. There was still an outhouse when we first started going there. Times have changed. It's not all bad

Yeah. That's the thing joeblow.
Times have changed.

Or as Stephen King would say "The world has moved on gunslinger"

Times always change.

I decided decades ago I wasn't going to be one of those aging people who cranked on about "the good old days"

Oh sure, the same as anyone, I'll get in coversations about something we enjoyed at a particular time, or how things were done, for better or worse. But ****, humans are smart. We invent things. I'm just glad I don't take a lot of the stuff I use in todays world for granted. Especially things that have so many uses, like cell phones and other hand held devices.

Phone, camera (both still and video) calculator, maps, texts, emails, weather, calanders, alarms, facetime, reminders and more....and that's without all the very useful apps a person adds.
Those basics are things I use every single day, all in one place.
Not to mention apps that I use to make money (in more than one way), find services and products, make appointments, and yes, play silly games to pass the time.

It's truly a wonderful world.
I marvel how quickly I can get business done. Things that would literally take days of back and forth can now be done in seconds or minutes.
I love that during all times I can keep in touch with anyone I want, all of us on our own time schedule.

heh. Just yesterday I was having 3 simultaneous conversations with 3 different people, via text.
It was like I was at a cocktail party, and no one new I was talking to 2 other people.
And I don't know what they were doing while I talked to them.

There's no way I can compare that to the privilege of being forced to dig my own sub basement.
No thanks.

Gee'z. A lot of us aren't that fat.

I get what you're saying though. I admire hard work, skill and diligence as much as the next guy. Just smart use of available tools, too.

We're of a similar age. Do you remember wringer washers? Most people had moved on, but there were still a few around when I was little. Big improvement over tubs of boiling water, to be sure. I remember visiting relatives on a farm in Manitoba. I had to bathe in a big tin tub in the middle of the farmhouse kitchen. It was horrible. I'd come from the suburbs.

**** no.

No to tubs in the middle of a room either.

Here's something I do remember.
Having to beg my father for weeks to put in the window air conditioners each year in the bedrooms. You would have thought we were asking for the moon.

Each year, having to listen to his story about how when he grew up in Bloomfield NJ he had to sleep in the attic without a fan, and how it was over 100 degrees up there until 4am.
Like he suffered, so we did too.
Then I asked him why he didn't just go downstairs and sleep on the cool floor. He didn't talk to me for 2 months, which was a relief.

Then when he would finally put them in, we were only allowed to turn them on a half hour before going to bed, and turn them off when we got into bed. I remember hoping I would fall asleep fast.
He however, would run his all night, with the window open.

What an asshole.
The man was a millionaire, which meant something at the time, but the only money he spent was on himself. Screw his kids, they could sleep in a hot attic for all he cared.

I have zero sentimentality about "the good old days"
They were by turns hot and sweaty, or cold and drafty.

The lesson I learned that even when I didn't have much, I refused to be a cheapskate. With me or anyone else.

I always prefered to have one nice thing rather than 5 pieces of crap.

I grew up under the most primitive conditions imaginable. I am somewhat better off these days. My biggest boast is, all of my children are doing better than me. I can feel better about all those things that held me down.

You’re a true survivor Edgar. You can be proud of that.

I remember wringer washers! I actually prefer them to the dreaded twin tub!

I went back to the old wringer when I first left home but was working as a cleaner for a school principal who had a twin tub...I swear it was because she’d never had to do her own washing.

I had to clean the whole house plus do her family’s ******* washing in a twin tub in 3 hours. She hoped I’d have time for ironing.

Plus she’d leave dinner party dishes from Saturday night until Wednesday,when I came.

I always had a great system, but that twin tub half killed me. You pretty much can’t leave them alone

Good on you for not being a cheapskate.

Well done!

I get that people are now at the point where they cannot imagine doing that. What made me the kind of freak that builds five of his own houses I don’t know. It did make me smile when Chai immediately pictured me in a dirt floor shack with a pot next to my bed to piss in. Kind of proves the point.

You have no idea how many times I’ve washed my face with warm water on a cold day and thanked God for having me born in the twentieth century. And starting my car, motorcycle, computer, microwave, Mr Coffee,...

And even the dreaded twin tubs were better than what came before.

Part of me wants to say you guys had an attic? (I always envied people who had big attics:) but the other part just wants to assure you I get it.

I think you have a lot to be proud of. Among other things, you're a decent human being and raised good kids. Truly, can't do much better than that where I come from.

That's so cool. Are they brick? Timber? In the woods?
Some of us just aren't that skilled, but it doesn't mean we couldn't have been ya know 😛