Crandall Avenue House

“After we moved back from California, we lived with Poppy and Charlie for a while. Then we moved to a house on 10th East. We had a beagel named Spot that had puppies and they were so cute. We kept one of the puppies named Tawny, but one of the neighbor kids accidentally dropped it and it died.

Then we moved 2 doors down to the pink house, where Matt was born. My Mom and Dad had to sleep on a pullout couch in the living room. It also had two small bedrooms on the main floor as well as the kitchen and dining room. There was also a bedroom in the basement. But there were black widows all over in that house. We had a big dog named Hondo at this house. My Dad would chain it to a stake in the yard, but it would just walk off dragging the chain and stake.

Then we moved into the Brewsters house on 984 Crandall Avenue. We moved into their house after they left because we wanted to stay in the same ward. It wasn’t a very big house. My Mom and Dad liked to entertain, so we built the New Room. We could have a big dining room table in there and fit a lot of people for holidays and Sunday dinners. Soon after it was built, Mom and Dad wanted a new dining room table for it. They were waiting for a certain table to go on sale and they showed up to the store before it opened on the day of the sale to purchase that table. It was a great room because everyone could spread out and we could all fit on one table. We had a huge backyard, but the New Room took some of that away. Bill Ware and my Dad worked really hard to build the New Room.

We had a really cool swing set in the backyard. The swings would go so high. There was a really big glider that could fit 3 people on both sides. But you had to be careful so you wouldn’t get pinched.

When we lived at 984 Crandall Avenue, we got Pugsley because my friend Janet had a poodle named Chim Chim so I begged my parents to get us a dog. Pugsley was naughty. He would run out the door and we would have to chase him. Every year for our birthdays, Pugsley would give us a big Hershey candy bar. He even continued that tradition after he died.

The basement was scary. There were lots of spiders. My Mom and Dad had a bedroom downstairs and when we would come home from dates, we had to go down there and say we were home. After all the kids moved away, Mom moved to an upstairs bedroom but Dad stayed downstairs.

My Dad used to give my Mom very nice porcelain pieces called Lenox for Christmas. She ended up with quite the collection. Grandma had a corner hutch in the living room. She kept a lot of Poppy’s stuff in there in addition to her Lenox collection. The grandkids always wanted to get in there and play with the pieces, but there was a key.

In this house, there was red carpet in the kitchen. When we had to sell the house eventually, we realized how gross that was and we had to get it replaced.

Mom and Dad were always reading their books in the living room. They read more than anyone I know. And Grandpa had his list of books that all his grandkids had to read.

Even after all the grandkids grew up, they loved to visit the Crandall house. They would even go there for lunch every day during College. The grandkids liked to go downstairs to find the stash of old candy.

There was also a really scary closet in the furnace room that had a lot of extra food. It was always scary when we had to go down there to get something from it.

When my Grandma Polson died of bone cancer, she was in a lot of pain although she never really complained. At the end of her life, we were supposed to give her morphine for the pain. My Mom and Pat ended up doing it for her. After she died, my Dad kept the morphine and hid it in the furnace room. It was found later when a guy came to work on the furnace before it was sold.

My bedroom was right to the left when you walked in the door. It was tiny and had a really little closet, but I loved it because I got my own bedroom instead of having to share with Pat. After they got a pinball machine many years later, it went in that room. The pinball machine was a big hit with everyone.

When we tried to sleep in as teenagers, my Dad would come into the room and sing “The day dawn is breaking, the world is awaking” in his loud Dad voice. We didn’t appreciate it.

We had what we called the breezeway when you walked into the back door. We always came into the house through the back door when we would come back to visit.

Everyone would gather at Mom’s for all birthdays, Easter, and many Sunday dinners.”

- Shelley Polson Johnson