Surprise! In out-of-the-way South America, a bit of home had arrived ahead of me

We were about to walk into what would become our home. Right then it looked like only a house, not a home. But I was more than eager to nest—to create a loving, secure home for the four of us.

Smiling, David Hockett ushered us out from under the withering noontime sun and into the wide, screened-in porch. He unlocked the back door and we stepped inside.

I don't know which impressed me most at first—the refreshing coolness or how nice the house was. This was no mud hut with a dirt floor! We had stepped into a regular house. It was far from elegant but also far from meager. Built of local reddish brick inside and out, it had a corrugated concrete-asbestos roof and ceramic tile floors, blessedly cool underfoot.

The U-shaped kitchen offered adequate cupboard space, the wooden cabinets painted blue with knobs and drawer pulls like those in the States, and Formica countertops. It had a small four-burner gas range, a stainless-steel sink sporting a Sears symbol, and a refrigerator with a Frigidaire emblem. A window above the sink looked toward the softball field below our yard.

And we’d have lights! During our months of preparation in the States, I wondered if we’d have to read by candlelight at night but, David told us, a central generator supplied electricity. And wells gave us safe drinking water. This place was turning out much better than I had let myself hope.

Two handmade, straight-backed (!) seats, each three feet wide, sat against two walls of a small living room. Made of plywood with gold-striped upholstered foam pads, they were far from attractive but I was glad they matched. We’d soon learn they were not the kind you could sink into—in fact, they were most uncomfortable—but at least we had furniture. Between them stood a small round end table with a golden-yellow ruffled tablecloth.

Grandma reading to Matt when she visited us

Beyond the living room, we stepped into a bodega, a storage room, which the former occupants had used as a study with a desk and shelves. The house had three bedrooms, each furnished with a bed. The bathroom had all we needed—a toilet, sink, and a cement enclosure with a shower head on the wall.

Windows on the west and south sides of the house were only screen-covered openings, but those on the east and north sides had screens over louvered glass because, we’d soon learn, storms came from that direction, and we had to close our windows to keep out driving rain.

It was a modest home, and it was small, but it was a pleasant surprise.

But another surprise awaited me. I spotted a telephone fastened to the wall, the old-fashioned, heavy, black kind from the 1950s.

When David Hockett noticed my interest in it, he explained it would connect us with homes and offices in Lomalinda, but we had no access to anyone outside. At least we could communicate with each other, which was more than I expected.

I stepped closer. The round sticker in the middle of the phone’s dial, where the phone number goes, said EM-4 followed by four-digits—and I squealed. “That’s a Seattle number! Emerson! From our neighborhood!” I knew lots of people with Emerson numbers.

David’s eyes lit up. “Right. Pacific Northwest Bell in Seattle donated our phones.”

“What?! My dad has worked there as an artist for more than twenty years. And I worked at PNB summers during high school.” 

I giggled. 

A little bit of home had arrived ahead of me.

P.S. Some forty years later, I learned that my former high school classmate, Jody Burchinal Sherin, had married a young man whose department at Pacific Northwest Bell sent those phones to Lomalinda. What a small, delightful world.