'50's Dream House a Fantasy

Reprinted with permission of the Boston Herald
 
They bought the house in 1953 with a GI loan for $10,200. It was their dream house, far away from the city's three-deckers and bus fumes. The house had a yard, a cellar, a dining room, and an unfinished upstairs where extra bedrooms could be built. They wrote an $83 check once a month for interest, principal and taxes. In 25 years they would own the house. In the meantime, they got to live in it. They had what they wanted - space, a garden, and a place where laundry could be hung out to dry and not be covered with soot when it was brought in. They bought a lawnmower, the kind you push. They got a dog, the kind they give away at the pound. 

If you'd asked them then if they had everything they wanted, they would have said yes. There were things they still wished for: A car that wasn't quite so old, a real dining room set. But these were just extras. They had what was most important. The house was their dream. 

Dreams today aren't quite so streamlined. They come packed full of what used to be extras. Houses cost far more than $10,000, not just because of inflation but because our dreams are grander. 

Compare 1953's standard Cape with a new home today. It had a small kitchen, a smaller dining room and one bedroom, or no dining room and two bedrooms, a living room, one bathroom and an unfinished upstairs. It didn't have a dozen spacious rooms. It didn't have even a tiny garage never mind one big enough for three cars. It didn't have a dishwasher, clothes dryer, microwave, garbage disposal, frost-free refrigerator, self-cleaning oven, and a security system. There were no walk-in closets. No one needed a walk-in closet, when there were just two kinds of clothes - work clothes and Sunday clothes. There were no jacuzzis, no his and her bathrooms, no custom-made curtains, guest rooms and guest bathrooms. 

Neither was there someone to cut your lawn, plow your driveway or clean your house. 

There used to be one black rotary dial telephone in the kitchen. There used to be one family car. It had a hood and four tires, and if mom needed it, she had to drive dad to work first. 

Now there are phones in every room - and the car - and a car for every driver and all the cars have intermittent wipers, an anti-theft device and a sound system. 

We used to live a far simpler, far less costly life. We have so much more today, so many more things, that if all of a sudden we were transported back to that 1953 Cape the way it was then - if we had to hang clothes on a line, chip ice off a freezer, cut the grass with a push mower, take turns driving the family car - we would think we were poor. 

And yet we were not. 

Given the opportunity, would we go back to those days? Would we trade today for yesterday? I don't think so. We like our things too much. We like all those cable stations, the pile of CDs on the shelf, the extra bathroom, the microwave. We like our conveniences and our toys. If our lives are frantic and we have to work harder and smarter to afford them, this is what we chose. 
Our standards have changed. Luxuries are now necessities. New houses cost hundreds of thousands of dollars in large part because of this, because they come with in-ground sprinklers and bathrooms bigger than living rooms used to be. This is what we expect. This is what we demand. 

We used to be happy with less. That 1953 Cape was built on a dirt road that remained a dirt road for years. The contractor never put in a lawn; the owners did. They used seed, not sod. It was never a perfect lawn, but they didn't notice. It looked like every other lawn on the block.