On 7/26/2012 2:31 PM, Leon wrote:

These homes in
the Texas area still look relatively good. You seldom see any
indication of foundation problems or cracks in the brick. I have
probably helped to repaint the interiors of a dozen of these homes and
they still look great, no cracks in the sheet rock.

There was a big migration of carpenters during that period that left the
North and East and moved to California and Texas ... well known
phenomenon. The schools I went to during that period were full of sons
and daughters of carpenters and builders, many Italian, who had one
other trait besides being "yankees"... to a boy/girl, they knew their
baseball! Our LL teams were full of Bonazi's, and Trapolino's and
Minnetrea's ... and they all played shortstop or third base.

The stories are that most of the carpenters who migrated to CA were
union, and thus most of those tract homes built in CA in the post war
50's were union built, so there was most definitely a higher skill level
than there has been since the 70's.

One of my favorite old time carpenters from that period was Larry Haun,
who recently died. He wrote a bunch fine stuff down through the years
for Fine Homebuilding magazine:

http://www.finehomebuilding.com/slid...arry-haun.aspx

A boatload of carpentry skill and knowledge was lost with that old man ...

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