1974 Catherine's letter -July 14

July 14, 1974
Dear Mom, Dad, Roberta, John, and Mary

Hi!  We were really overwhelmed to receive two letters yesterday.  Appreciated your sending those from Aunt Mary and the clipping was very interesting.  Too bad we don't have more space we could do something like that.  We have built more shelves in the attic of the library in an attempt to make three years growth space for the magazines.  Even with the new shelves we have still been found it necessary to discard some things which we would keep if there were more room.  The preliminary plans for the [building] addition are still in progress.  The architect (a member of the board) seems to be the busiest man in town.  He says he'll have something done by a certain date and then we're lucky if it's done a month later.

We had dinner last night at Tom & Mary Ellen's.  It was the first time we had been to their house and wow is it big.  They have 3 bedrooms plus the master bedroom and the "guest suite," a formal living room, a gigantic family room, an office and the basement.  I'd get tired thinking about cleaning a place like that.  We didn't see their youngest son, Jimmy, as he was already in bed.  Mike, the 4-year-old, reminded me of Tommy – blond hair.  Tom seems to be working hard at the printing business.  Mary Ellen sends out the bills.

On our own house we're coming very slowly.  We poured the second half of the foundation last Tuesday and almost had a disaster.  One of the sections of plywood wasn't braced very well and when the cement went in it bowed out at the bottom and in at the top.  And because the cement was there we couldn't straighten it out again.  So we poured the rest in very slowly and fortunately it didn't give altogether.  However it turned out to be only 10 inches wide at the top and we were planning to put a 12" wall on top of it.  On that side now the wall will be only 10" thick.  We have more or less decided that we won't go all the way up with stone, but perhaps 8 feet and then frame in the rest so that we can have it enclosed by fall winter.  Right now we're about two weeks behind our projected schedule as the foundation took longer than we had anticipated.  Yesterday we put the coating on to keep it from leaking.  Today we're going to level the basement floor so we can pour a cement floor, and we'll start setting up the forms for our stone work.

"Hello" to Grandma.  Hope you all write again soon!  Love, Catherine & X