Mom and Dad purchased a large house on 850 Cambria Street in Albion Michigan. This location is outside of Calumet to the Northeast. This home had at the time, 4 pretty good-sized bedrooms on the second floor. The house was a 3-and-a-half-story home heated with coal when we bought it. The coal came in a truck and was conveyed into the coal bin. With a shovel, we had to fill the hopper that augured the coal into the boiler. A large water tank was above the burning coal. This heated water turned to steam and when it traveled through the pipes to various portions of the house, the radiators would hiss and clink. One time, Dad didn’t monitor the level of the water in the tank, and it ran dry. All of the radiators began to blow steam throughout the house. That was scary. We thought there was a fire. Dad right away started to refill the hot water tank and more steam blew throughout the house. Realizing what he had done, he was concerned that the cast iron tank would crack but it didn’t. Shortly, the steam quit spewing, and all was well.
Our bedroom at the top of the stairs, to the right, was big enough to have a dresser, a desk, and a chair. We had a bunk bed for the 2 of us. My brother Reino and I slept in this room. When we first moved into it, the walls had old wallpaper with a 1950s print. I was tasked with scraping the old paper off with a bladed scraper. I used a spray called “Big Wally Wall Washer”. This softened the paper so it would come off easier. Much of the plastered wall wasn’t smooth and I ended up gouging the plaster in places. Otherwise, on smoother surfaces, the paper scrapped off easily. After that was done, we tried to smooth out the rough spots as best we could. Mom decided to paper the walls with red, white, and blue stripes. We didn’t mind the new look, as young boys, what did we care? This newly applied paper showed some of the rough spots but I guess the stripes on the new wallpaper helped to hide them. The floor was hardwood and in pretty good shape. On one wall