Owning 411 Bonnie Drive

My mother had voiced the opinion that my house at 931 Seaview was no place to bring a new bride. So Jean and I spent several months I guess in looking for a house in which to set up our life together. In conjunction with this search I sold 931 Seaview and during the process the house was advertised to sale, I guess in the Berkeley Gazette and the advertisement was noticed by my erstwhile landlady at 411 Bonnie Drive.

The Wilsons were wanting to sell 411 Bonnie Drive I think because their son-in-law who was in the navy was being transferred and his family, who had been living with the Wilsons, would be leaving. The house had been bought by the Wilsons at least partly on the financial standing of the son-in-law so they needed to sell. In the end we bought the house, although it would not have been my choice — there were a couple of other houses that I would have preferred at the time, one of which was nearby on Colusa Avenue, hardly a stone’s throw away. In the end though the house at 411 Bonnie Drive served us well and perhaps it was the best alternative.

It had been constructed early in WWII by John Weston who lived a couple of houses away on Bonnie Drive. Weston was a competent and able builder but rather unimaginative in his house plans. The Wilsons had added a downstairs bathroom, which I had used during the time I roomed there. During the time we lived at 411 Bonnie Drive we did several things to make the house more suitable for our needs and wants. I finished off an unfinished area under the house that Mr. Wilson had excavated and this was my workshop area. Ray and I refinished the floors in the dining and living rooms — I can well remember the evening and night that we devoted to this undertaking.

After Laurel was born I constructed the extension to the house, providing two additional bedrooms, one downstairs off the rumpus room and one upstairs. Ray and Deryl helped me pour the foundation, I contracted the stucco work and roofing and I hired the electrical foreman at Emeryville to do the wiring. In conjunction with the work we replaced one floor furnace with a circulating air furnace and there were minor changes such as the sliging glass doors off the rumpus room, some window replacements and making a hallway alongside an existing bedroom upstairs. This latter change resulted in a rather small bedroom, but adequate for one person.

The whole project took about a year of my spare time and as Jean said later I did little else than work at Shell, work on the changes and eat and sleep. This left Jean with the major part of the housework at a time when Laurel was still an infant. We had off and on looked around for another residence but couldn’t find one that suited us, which is the reason we went ahead with the extension.

For me it was an interesting project and a challenge, but I wonder in retrospect if we wouldn’t have been wiser to have hired a builder to do the work. We had also contemplated a second extension of the house to increase the size of the dining room with a room below it back of the garage but this never materialized.

Outside the house, I replaced the backyard fence and terrace the backyard to make it more usable. I also constructed a patio with a fence around it, making sort of a large outdoor play area where the girls could be confined. Here it was that we had the sand table (which Ray gave us after Deryl and Ralph outgrew it) and where the girls would play endlessly. We also had a couple of swing and glider sets on which the girls played — I can’t really remember there they came from originally.

It proved to be a livable house, close to schools and public transportation and shopping while still giving the impression of being in a strictly residential area. Muriel I think was the one of us most closely attached emotionally to the house — I don’t think Jean or I ever regarded it that way and I don’t recall the other girls commenting on their feelings about it.

As I look back and think about the years from 1953 to 1972 that we lived at 411 Bonnie Drive I have the feeling that it was a very satisfying part of our lives. We enjoyed our three daughters as they were born and grew up, with Muriel finishing high school before the move to Houston. During the earlier part of the period, Jean’s folks were still quite active and able, and there were frequent visits between the home on Stuart Street and 411 Bonnie Drive. During part of the time I had a garden in the backyard at Stuart Street, as there was rather limited area for such activity at our home. We were also frequent visitors out at Jean’s sister’s home in Walnut Creek. And while Jean’s parents were still living, the Ritchies would often be up at Christmastime and we saw them on other occasions when we visited them in their home in Ontario.