1930 census

We've been stuck inside the house for three days this week during an endless tropical storm. By day two I'd read both my library books, cut two inches off my hair, and had had enough of Monopoly and Scrabble. I took advantage of the electricity and internet we were lucky to have and looked up the 1930 census record for the Mercks, the first census after this house and the one next door were built.

Many people in the area worked for the "steam railroad" or as clerks. The census taker valued the house at $7000, based on what the Mercks told them was their purchase price, I'll assume. The Mercks were the same age as me (Jason is a bit older than me) when they bought the house and "wife" Marion Merck is listed as "male". A few lines down is the house number for the now-empty lot where there is a storm-water pumping station. And it looks like the poor house next door to us began life as a rental, possibly doomed to stay that way.

Looking down the list most of the wives didn't have occupations outside the house. That Marion went to work as a saleswoman at a drugstore, and not even the one owned by her husband, is pretty cool. Prior to marrying Mr. Merck, she lived with her first husband, listed as a produce salesman, a few blocks from the first Merck drugstore. Here is a 1947 picture of the Merck store when it was located downtown, a few years before closing:

This entry has a lot more info. I found most of it by searching the old city directories at the main library.

More arachnaphobia!

Ew. My mom read the last post and sent me these current photos from her yard.

Spider season

Last night I dreamed I wrestled with one of these, a banana spider. They're usually out in June, making babies and living in 20-foot webs attached to your porch to catch the flying bugs attracted to the light. Which makes them even more fearsome to live with because you have to duck under them to bring in the groceries. I'm sure mailmen hate them. They aren't included in the average Florida tourist brochure, for sure.


From http://www.davidmichaelkennedy.com/

Living in the lawn are 2" fuzzy gray wolf spiders, which I think are fairly national, and also on the palmettos there are spiders which look like tiny turtles with lots of legs, which sit in the middle of their nets. They are kinda cute. Inside the house are tiny pindot spiders, sitting in the caulk space of tubs and sinks, waiting for wet gnats? My mom has bulbous tan spiders which look like ticks when full, living on her patio.

The point is, it feels like insects and arachnids are taking over everywhere you go, but it's just the humid jungle bug season. You can't do much about them and they always come back. I haven't actually seen any bananas at my house this year, which is super. Ugh. And neither of those are MY hands.

Canning (no painting)

Not much new to report on the house this month. July and August in Florida are like January and February in upstate New York; you could go outside, but why would you? Although, to be fair sometimes you physically can't go outside in an upstate January.

The phone line was fixed at the pole by AT&T (the new Bell monopoly). The house system needs to be rewired too but the crawlspace is still drying out from all the summer rain. There is a temporary line from the wall box to the phone inside.

The paint bucket says not to paint above 90 degrees, which it is, so I've been inside canning things. What I really want is cheesecake in a jar with raspberries on top, but I've read you shouldn't can dairy. What I've done this summer is tomato wedges and sauce, baked beans, sweet banana peppers, ketchup, and grape and pomegranate jellies. The tomatoes were $11 for 30lbs from the farmer's market and the peppers were from the backyard.

Peppers, along with broccoli and butternut squash, seem to be the only capable crops in our yard. I've never had more than a few smallish tomatoes from a plant, the corn reached a whopping 12 inches high this year and legumes have leaf miners from the moment they sprout. The watermelon never flowered, and the tortured zucchini were stunted and died of a horrible overnight fungus as did the okra. It seems stuff planted in the traditional spring planting season doesn't grow fast enough to produce food before the onset of summer heat, our equivalent of first frost. Mom and I looked at the neighborhood garden last week and saw lots of tall okra and pole beans, high-heat crops, I guess.