The newlyweds ordered the no-frills, $7500 model — two or three bedrooms depending on how you count them.

They passed on the half-bath and folded the garage into the basement. The one luxury they agreed upon was granite windowsills.

Considering Hagner’s astronomical asking price for the homes he was building, Julia’s family thought she and Ambrose were taking a terrible risk. Payments of $31.63 a month for thirty years, my word, can you imagine?

They borrowed the down payment from an aunt who would become the sixth member of the household. The interest on her loan was repaid with an armchair glued directly in front of the television set.

The property owned Ambrose and Julia as much they owned it. It exercised a veto over nice clothes, vacations, babysitters and dinners out.

Julia knew every last square inch and put it to good use. She was thrilled when the coal bin was converted into a storage room. Her one great regret was not having more closets.

They weren’t much for toys but they had an impressive collection of hand tools and, as heirs to a clay pugger and a glassworker, they knew how to use them. They once backed a fifteen-year-old Plymouth into their garage and hand-painted it green. It went faster, one of the boys noticed.

The lot was generous. Ambrose planted Julia’s beloved maples, one red and one gold, where she could contemplate them from the kitchen. There were 5 hardwoods in all. The grape arbor and apple trees provided more than enough fruit to “put up” for the winter. But the peach tree was a mistake and the ivy on the north of the house ate into the tuck-pointing.

Julia and Ambrose outlived that mortgage and spent the next seventeen years in a home they owned outright.

Today the place is owned by a couple of kids from Kentucky. It’s valued at just over $100,000.