Webb: To Dad, home really was where the heart was

If not for a banker and sky-rocketing interest rates, the Webbs may have never lived in Kansas. We wouldn’t have had any clue where Burlingame was. My brother and I wouldn’t have met our wives. I doubt I’d have any idea that Washburn, a place that has shaped much of my life, was a college.

By the time I was 12 in 1989, we’d moved as often as most people move in their lifetime. We’d lived in Joplin, Neosho, Anderson and Lebanon in Missouri and Bloomer in Arkansas. Weeks before I was born, my parents moved from San Diego to Joplin. Needless to say, the family traveled.

But as I was finishing the seventh grade, it looked like we’d finally settled in Lebanon. Dad and Mom had bought a heavily-wooded property just north of Russ, and we’d put in a pond the previous year.

As spring approached in 1989, Dad and Mom took the next step, working with a contractor on plans for a new house built next to the pond. Dan and I got to make a few decisions on our rooms, which was pretty cool for a couple of pre-teens.

We were all excited. Dan and I loved going to school in Lebanon and had plenty of friends. I figured we’d both graduate from the high school and be on our way.

At the time Dad began to work on the finances with a local bank, the interest rates were low, making buying a house feasible. But as the weeks rolled by and building plans were finalized, the aforementioned banker began to stall.

“At that time, the interest rates starting going up,” Dad said. “I was ready to go, ready to sign the paperwork, and that clown started to hold off. By the time he wanted to sign the papers, the rates were sky-high. There was no way in hell I was going to pay those rates. We had great credit, and he just wanted to milk us for more money. I’ll never forget the look on his face when I told him we were done.”

In a matter of months, we were on our way down the highway, again, this time to some small town south of Topeka. Years later, of course, I’m a proud Burlingame High alumnus.

With the move came the exact opposite in living arrangements. We went from what we expected to be a palace to living on grassy farmland featuring a decent-enough trailer located behind a not-decent-enough house and, of all things, a damn outhouse.

Dad had dipped his toes in the water of paradise (a brand new home) and went right back to what he knew when that didn’t work out — rebuilding a shit box. I’ll never forget spending a toasty July afternoon digging into rock-hard clay for a functional sewer line from the trailer to the lagoon on the property. At least Dad let me take the first dump in our new pad to test our work.

Ultimately, the foundation of the 100-year-old house couldn’t be repaired. Dad and Mom sold the property, and we moved into another archaic house in town. Yet another remodeling project.

That seemed to be a theme in the old man’s life. His work on the house in Neosho endures 40 years later. On our last visit in August, it looked like a quaint home off the highway.

When we moved to Lebanon, the house in Russ was off-kilter enough that you could roll a marble down the wooden floors. We also relied on a wood stove for heat. That was fine when you went to bed, not so much when you woke up. Dad cackled until his dying day about the morning he woke up to find his dentures frozen in the cup he kept them in overnight.

The old man insulated the house, chainsawed out a faulty ceiling to the second floor and muscled the shack into a nice home before we moved five years later.

Even in his 60s, Dad took on some daunting remodels. The place in Melvern had holes in the floor, faulty plumbing, shady wiring and heaps of trash bags in the back yard. You read that last part right. The people renting the house before he bought it literally threw their trash into the four-foot high grass behind it.

After living in that revamped home for nearly a decade, it sold for three times what he paid.

The last remodel came less than a decade ago after his first heart attack in 2012. After buying what amounted to a small barn on a property outside of Overbrook, Dad gradually built his last house. I have fond memories of working with my oldest stepson and the old man on the foundation.

I always marveled that someone with no training could handle every project in a rebuild. He did all the electrical and plumbing, He found creative ways to overcome obstacles. Aside from demolishing and starting over, he did it all. It was symbolic of who he was.

I will always remember being devastated that we lost our dream house. All these years later, though, I can’t imagine growing up in a home he didn’t pour his blood and sweat into.