Stories of Home - #1

A manifesto of living well..

“It's time I found myself,
Totally surrounded in your circles”

“Please.. celebrate me home.”

- Kenny Loggins

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Home. A dwelling place of dreams from the time we are born. Air, food and water. A roof over our heads. Home is what we search for our whole lives, both figuratively and literally. We bring our baby home. The soldier yearns to come home. The immigrant wanders and wonders. Where is home? The runaway searches, the homeless, laid bare, creates an untethered “safe haven.” Something, anything, to feel the walls that hold us at bay from the noisy cold world, if just for a moment. Home, beautiful, imperfect home, where all innocence grows from and craves a home of their own.

The old country raised homes and barns for one another. We move to be “near home,” close to loved ones. As children we draw our homes with crayons, build them with blocks and with what time we are given on earth, at the end, there is a heavenly home, that’s been there for an eternity, waiting for us. If only we will travel to and eventually answer the door of that Home. Our eternal, perfect and uncompromising home.

From the time Larry Johnson was a young boy he was thinking about a home. I recently reached out to one of his daughters to ask for information, that I so craved, about my home. The home he and his wife, Elizabeth, built over the course of 20 years. I yearned to know more about my home, because no matter how much I have fought to stay here, I knew that I walked within the walls of the people who lived in it, breathed it in and loved it with all of their hearts and souls. I have tried to shut down their dream, my dream, my calling to live here, but I just can’t. I find myself, especially at Christmas, carefully placing things around that I treasure. Stories of who we are, where we have been, our history contained in pottery, glass ornaments and treasures that others crafted to bring us the sense of home. I stand back satisfied in their placement.

Something about Christmas that magically held us together in a foreign land and continued to hold us together through the years. So fitting that my dad would slowly pass away through Christmas, reminding me further of my love for home.

I walk outside to the garden area and feel the need to tend to everything with great care, often plucking an aphid off of a leaf and squishing it in split seconds. I would learn that Mrs. Johnson did the same. I mull over placement, as she did, yet adore a beautiful and natural wildness, as she did. My treasures are the rocks and seashells collected for years on the beach of Oregon. They are scattered among the plants, reminding me of those days with various old pots, unique chairs, wall hangings and ceramic treasures I have collected, as she did.

No matter how much I try to tell myself this home, that chose us and left us upside-down with a broken family, is just temporary, I received the manifesto for living in it well and the timing was all His. It’s time. It’s time to live. To swing open the doors, invite people in and be immensely grateful for it’s most purposeful story.

A story of dreamers, creators and homebodies interconnected on the journey home.

Larry Lee Johnson was born August 22nd, 1922 on a homestead in Montana. Of Scandinavian heritage, by the time he was 2 years old his family moved, with his five brothers, to San Dimas, California. The home he grew up in, in our community, is considered the “second oldest home.” They all attended the local schools and after high school Larry served in WW2 as a Seabee, stationed in the Pacific. His parents were beyond proud to have all six of their children serving at the same time and extremely grateful that they all came home.

At least four generations attended the San Dimas Community Church. Larry trained to become a master plumber, and was employed by a local plumbing and heating company where it is thought he met the quietly revered mid-century architect, Theodore Criley Jr. Larry had worked on many an industrial and institutional job site, like the Claremont Colleges, where materials at the time were masonry block, casement windows and clerestory glass.

From a detailed sketch of an entry door, in his high school mechanical drawing class, called “The Hello,” Larry would give “Ted Criley” (or Theodore Criley Jr., AIA) his ideas for his first home 10 years later.

Margaret Elizabeth White-Johnson was born on July 25th, 1931 in Beebe, Arkansas. She was known to most as Liz. Her childhood was less than ideal and often painful. Never having spent more than one grade in each school she attended, her father had a construction business that mostly graded roads and building sites, and the family was forced to move from job to job, often moving city to city, or to another state following the work.

For a little girl, making friends meant saying goodbye and gave her insecurities about home. Liz loved gardening from a young age and once raised 100 chickens from babies for a 4H project.

In her third year of high school in Memphis, Tennessee, Liz was elected Homecoming Princess. She loved the countryside and riding horses with her brother. By the end of her Jr. year work had dried up for her dad and they headed west. That would be her last year of school. Her dad bought a service station with a little coffee shop attached to it in Glendora, California. Liz’s younger brother would help their dad at the service station and she would become the waitress at the coffee shop. “The Owl,” as it was called, stayed open late and she would work long hours waiting tables and cleaning up after closing.

Larry made The Owl his late night food stop after bowling and after several months would begin to date Liz. The best part of this story is that when he heard her story of constantly moving, not being able to find the security of a home and friends and working through her senior year to help her family, he told her “I will build you a house where you will never have to move again.”

Tears streaming down my face, this story of a home created out of love, a gift of security and joy, for the rest of their lives, began shortly after they married in June of 1951. At 19 and 28 years old, respectively, Liz and Larry Johnson began almost immediately to clear the lot Larry had purchased in downtown San Dimas. They worked evenings and weekends, much like we did as a family, and it would be a project that would take nearly two decades to complete. Humbled, it was amazing to read the details of their labor. They did everything except plaster work on the block walls and millwork for the kitchen cabinets! Although we built our own home on a relatively similar budget, and took on a lot of the labor, we were able to hire more trades to do the things we had no time to do ourselves and moved in much quicker.

The Johnson’s would rent a home, as we did, nearby and would often picnic at their build-site. The entire foundation, block and plaster walls and roof were completed early on. During this time their family grew with two little girls and they would eventually move into their home in phases, completing one side of the home and working on the other as they lived amongst the construction.

I can still envision the story of Larry going to the marble scrapyard every evening after work and hand laying the pieces in no particular order creating a pattern as he went. His children waiting patiently, carrying them one by one, over to him, as he carefully placed them. I see my own husband working on our home everyday after work into the evening and on weekends. We’d drive there after school and activities, do homework, bring food, and look around at the progress. On weekends we worked together on our home. There are happy faces sitting in the backhoe, contributing to the process, and tired faces sleeping on the way to the rental.

As Larry and his father fed shovels of dry cement, crushed gravel and sand into an old red cement mixer, used for mortar for the cinder block walls, I see children wandering around finding things to do, falling down, skinning knees, and walking through freshly poured concrete. We walked this path so many years later than The Johnson family, only to return to their story and be reminded of ours.

His hand was in every detail, and oh how He knows our stories before we do.

Liz, a petite woman, would flourish, growing her many talents and skills over the years. She would sew her four children’s clothes, arrange flowers at church, garden, quilt, do many needle crafts, make dolls and loved to cook and entertain. Liz would be known throughout the community for her sweet boutique business, making silk flower arrangements, called “Elizabeth’s Garden.” To this day I get mail addressed to her business and consider it a gentle reminder to keep going. Liz was a loving, elegant and well spoken woman. The first thing that jumped out at me when we first entered our home-to-be, was a beautiful painted portrait of her in the hallway. She was well-loved and she so loved and appreciated her home and family.

Together, Larry and Liz were never afraid of getting dirty, working all hours, over the years to accomplish their goals. Together, we were chosen to honor their legacy and bring their dream home into the 21st century.

We walk in their story in familiar ways, yet their story has given us a reason to go forward, infusing all of their energy, and a renewed hope into our hearts. No story comes without grief or loss. Their story is the American Dream. As ours has been. Hard work, patience, never giving up, overcoming obstacles, gratitude and trust in God.

This is a story of home. Of finding yourself totally surrounded in your circles. The circles of the past, present and future. It’s a story of celebration, of hope, of the most natural desire in the world. To belong. To be home.

Please, celebrate us home..

The Johnson weather vane over the garage that is still there today :)

Larry Johnson tiling the roof with daughter Lynda sitting on the tiles :)

Our children sitting on the backhoe while building our former family home, breaking ground in 1999.

My John building his dream home for us. It pained him to leave. He is an amazingly strong, hard-working and talented man. I am so proud of him and what he did for us.

The palm trees The Johnson’s planted in the backyard, circa mid 1950’s. The sky was showing all it’s glory in the summer of 2018 when we moved in.

Next up: I’ll be focused on more stories of home..