The Ward family quickly outgrew house #1 which led to house #2. With two kids and a third on the way, along with the parents and Ernest, house #2 was getting crowded. My Guest Author, my dad, talks about the second dwelling of the family.
Here is a picture of house #2. Another old picture shows that the sawmill was set up in the central background. The two green trees beside the house had somehow escaped being burned. The skeletons of the burned-out forest lined the steeper side of the mountain just a few feet to the left of the cabin. When the first sizable rain came, the mountainside had no mulch to absorb the rainwater. A flood, black with soot and floating debris, threatened to wash down the house. For the next four years the burned-out timber colored the logging crew black and gave the laundress a difficult job. To add to this, it was hard to spend winter on the south side of the creek where the sun only came over the mountain four hours a day. By 1925 the twenty-foot log cabin was getting crowded. Weasels and mink ate the pet rabbits, and a bear stole a hundred-pound sack of sugar. Mother was ready to move. When the railroad company offered the chance to buy green living timber on the sunny side of the valley, they moved to what would be the permanent location.
Do you suppose she (“Niter” as Bud called her) got pregnant so they would build her a larger house in which to live?
Stay tuned for house #3…