23




 bought the first lot up on the hill and Austin bought this one
 down here. Paul started his house and moved in before we did.
 He was the first one up here. And then we were the second. When
 we first got married, we rented a house down on Florida Avenue.
 I'll show it to you. Then we started the house right away. We
 stayed there until it was just too big. We moved into an apart-
 ment down on Howry Avenue and started building. We married in
 June of '22 and we moved up here in September. The architect had
 a hard time. Momma insisted on arches. She wanted panish arches,
 and he had a problem adjusting all these arches in these rooms and
 fixing the windows to fit them. He said he lost money on it. It
 cost us eight thousand, five hundred dollars.

J: That was in 1922.

C: Yes, to build this house. Then we put this wing on in about 1975
 and it cost triple that, I think. Just this one room and bath and
 closet.

J: This one room is twenty by twenty.

C: It's more than that. Twenty-two by about twenty-six. That room in
 there is twenty-six by nineteen. But it was a bathroom and it's the
 plumbing that runs you up. But I know this one room cost almost
 triple what we paid for the whole house in those days.

J: I noticed in some of the early pictures of this house that the
 roofed balcony was not there.

C: No. That was a parapet. It was an open balcony and we could never
 stop the rain. So finally they raised the roof, and put the roof
 over it. They just had to; people still have trouble with parapets.

J: Did Austin share much of the business life with you?

C: Oh definitely not. I had no idea what he made. One day when the
 census woman came and asked me how much my husband made, I told
 her I had no idea. So when he came at noon, I told him that and
 he said you tell her it's none of her business. And that's as far
 as I ever got. That's why when he died I had no idea that he had
 accumulated the wealth that he had. I was always so conservative
 and he was always trying to get me to spend money. He said, well,
 you want it, get it. And when we'd go to a restaurant, I'd look
 down the menu and pick out the cheapest side. And it would irri-
 tate him so. And he'd order something good and I'd eat off of his
 plate. And he'd say you should have ordered it yourself. He was
 a great fellow. He put up with a lot. He really did.

J: When did your mother and father die?

C: Momma died in 1933, and Papa died in 1936.

J: Now you were on a voyage with him after your momma died.