Upon returning to the United States from Nova Scotia in the fall of 1979, I purchased a 5,000 s.f. Victorian Home in a sad state of repair in Nevada, Iowa. Nevada is the county seat of Story County, and is located only 15 miles from Collins, Iowa, where I grew up and graduated from high school.
My Mother and Father still lived on the farm south of Collins, and 1979 was the first time I had lived in the area since graduating from high school in 1957. We closed on the purchase of the house on Halloween Day, October 31, 1979, and renovated the house over the winter and sold it in the spring of 1980.
It is interesting to remember that I bought the paint for the outside of the house from a paint store in Denver, Colorado, and hauled it to Nevada. The paint was a close-out item, on sale for $2.00 per gallon! Even in 1979 good paint cost $18 to $20 per gallon. But the $2.00 paint was still on the house and looking good several years later.
