Preserving the Past

The Mister spent some time last week at the red brick house just east of Lakeview Village, which is known around the office as “Uncle Hugh’s house.” At the moment the First Cousin’s son and family live there as they oversee the farming operations on Morrison Ranch. But for many years, the Mister’s great uncle lived there, and produced a few stories and memories that are not easily erased. So as Lakeview Trails North proceeds as our next community, the question arose as to how we would treat Uncle Hugh’s house. The answer is: in loving preservation. Let me explain why we all remember Uncle Hugh with such fondness.

Hugh Nichols is the brother of the Mister’s grandmother (we now office in what was once her house), and the Nichols family came to Gilbert and started farming in the early 1900’s. In fact, it was Uncle Hugh that persuaded the Morrisons to locate in Gilbert. The Morrisons were traveling from California to New Mexico to live; they stopped in at Uncle Hugh’s for Thanksgiving, and the story is that they had turkey on Thursday, and the kids were enrolled in school on Monday.

The Mister can’t remember when Uncle Hugh built the brick house because it’s been there throughout the Mister’s life, but he suspects it was in the late 1940’s. Uncle Hugh and his wife lived there until they passed away, and, as they never had children, the house was then used by the farm foreman up to the present.

The Mister remembers Uncle Hugh as an eclectic fellow, indulging his curiosity in a variety of venues. He had an aviary back behind his house, with all manner of exotic birds that laid eggs of different colors. He had a pen in his front yard that housed miniature white deer from Africa. (Even I remember those deer; they were still there when I married the Mister in 1979.) He owned a uranium mine somewhere in Arizona.

His entrepreneurial spirit led him to team up with a fellow who wanted to build a STOL (short takeoff and landing) airplane. Uncle Hugh funded the venture and they built the aircraft in the barn behind the house. The airplane never flew, according to the Mister’s memory.

I see that the Mister comes by his Renaissance Man label honestly, as Uncle Hugh’s genes have filtered down through the family. The Mister can converse intelligently about any number of subjects; but that’s another story.

So when Lakeview Trails North starts construction next spring, Uncle Hugh’s house will be “excepted” as they say in developer’s parlance. It will remain, separated out in much the same way as Grandma’s house has been separated out for our office. It will fit in with its surroundings, I promise. But no matter who lives there now or in the future, I’m quite sure it will always be called “Uncle Hugh’s house.”