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THE ALFORD HOMEPLACE: DECONSTRUCTING A DOGTROT by Sue M. Friday  When I got back from Hemphill with the barbeque sandwiches from Fat Fred’s Grocery, husband Tom and cousin Troy Pfleider had already stopped work and were sitting on what was left of the front porch. Tom’s camo T-shirt blended to the same khaki brown as his pants, the pattern barely discernable. The T-shirt that Troy wore under his overalls would never be white again. Both seemed to have a dusty aura, beginning with their caps and moving down to their boots. “You are the two dirtiest men in Sabine County,” I said, shaking my head. “Sue,” Troy answered, “we’ve been slithering around under this house like snakes!” It was October of 2001, and the house they had been slithering under is our 100+ year-old dogtrot that was on the verge of falling down. Never painted or modernized beyond electricity and rudimentary plumbing, it sits on land outside of Hemphill that has been in my family for five generations. My grandparents, Adron and Ada Alford, lived there, and my mother and her twin brother were born in it in 1916. Vacant since my grandparents’ death thirty years ago, the house has always been “home” and snuggles into that spot in my heart reserved for the place that welcomes and gives comfort. It preserves special childhood memories of barefoot summers, watermelons on the porch, hugs, and hymns. Although we live a two-day’s drive away in North Carolina, by virtue of being retired and experienced remodelers Tom and I were the only family members willing to undertake its rescue. Troy is also retired, and like Tom has a unique ability to problem solve and improvise —essential qualifications for this type of project. 285 The house is simple. It is built of the virgin longleaf pine that once covered Sabine County. The main boards are 1'' × 12'' × 15' and rough sawn. Battens cover the seams between the boards and because there are no studs, the outside wall is also the inside. My late uncle, Sabine County historian Cecil McDaniel, told me it was a box house, a type once common throughout the county. There are two main rooms sixteen feet square, backed by two shed rooms eight by sixteen feet. The open hall in the center and porch across the entire front are each 8' wide. They form a “T” shaped extra living area that catches every stray summer breeze. The original kitchen was a log structure attached to the north shed room. Grandpa hitched a team of mules to it and dragged it 286 The Folk: Who We Are and What We’ve Done Ada and Adron Alford in front of the house with Pearl and Ruby, early 1960s into the pasture in the ’20s. In its place he built a larger board and batten kitchen. By the time we started work, parts of that kitchen were on the ground and severely termite damaged. On the advice of a friend with a backhoe, we filled the kitchen with everything we couldn’t use, cut it loose from the main house with a Sawz-All, pulled it away with the backhoe and disposed of it. We were able to salvage the doors. Troy later rebuilt one that still had a latch string and installed it on the back of the main house. Tom used another as the headboard for our bed when we began camping out in the house. Longtime fans of the TV show This Old House, we quickly realized that Norm (Abrams) doesn’t tell you everything you need to know about old houses—like the filth that accumulates from the rats and mice that move in when the people move out. The kitchen was used to dispose of all the bedding, clothing, fiberboard, linoleum, and furniture too far gone to re-use. We spent the first few days in gloves and masks. The house sits on large iron ore rocks spaced under sill beams. Since the tin roof was in reasonable shape, Tom and Troy began with this foundation. The floor was springy and we were in danger of falling through certain parts. They found that over the years the pine sill beams had cupped around the tops of the rocks, causing the floor to sag. Two beams were on the ground. They crawled under the house with a car jack and lifted it corner by corner. To help bring it to level...

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