Her Resort

WAITSBURG - The 1889 "Vollmer House" has finally come to be known as the "Davis House" after about 50 years of the family inhabiting it.

Joyce Davis, who moved into the home on Highway 12 right outside of Waitsburg in the early 1970s, said every- one around town had always called it the Vollmer House because the Vollmer Fam- ily had built it in 1889 and owned it until it was sold to Bill and Joyce Davis. Joyce said she recently was about town and asked someone - "Do you call the house the Vollmer House or the Davis House?"

She said she was pleased to hear the person say: "The Davis House."

Joyce smiles at the memo- ry of that moment.

Her husband Bill died June 20. Joyce remains in the home.

There is nowhere else Joyce would rather live than in the Davis House right off of Highway 12.

"I thought it was cute," she said. "With all this old stuff it kind of looked authentic. Anybody who lives here is really lucky."

For 45 years, the Davis duo and their five children had every Thanksgiving in the home. Joyce would cook and the family would gather for the feast.

In addition to all of those wonderful holiday meals, Joyce also likes to recount the tale of when the house, barn, garage and bunk house were picked up and moved back away from the highway in 1972.

Joyce and Bill had pur- chased the home in the 1970s. Bill had been a grocer his whole life, starting low on the ladder in Safeway as a kid and working his way up to owning and operating the Dayton IGA, now the Dayton Mercantile. Joyce had been a telephone operator in Dayton and when that occupation evolved and was phased out, she was hired on as Bill's bookkeeper at the grocery store. The work relationship turned into a romantic relationship.

"That's how we met," Joyce recalls. "I applied for a job and got it and we fell in love and got married."

The couple married in 1965 and decided the Vollmer House, which had sat empty for years, would be the per- fect place to raise their kids, Carmen, Jeff, Scott, Barbara and Bill Jr. The property also has acreage for Joyce's horse.

"We were so pleased to find a house we could love and we could live in," she said.

Shortly after the couple moved into the home with their children, the state informed them they would either need to demolish the home or move it farther away from Highway 12 because the state was plan- ning to expand the road. At the time, the house faced the road, it wasn't right against it, but sat back a bit.

"In order to save it, we had to move it," she said.

Other historic homes along the highway were torn down. Joyce said the couple talked about tear- ing the old Vollmer home down and building a new house or moving it. Joyce said she was very attached to the home because of its intricate scrollwork in the wooden trim and its beautiful craftsmanship. She simply couldn't give it up.

So, the couple hired a company out of Walla Walla to pick up the house and move it. The family poured concrete foundations where the house, garage, bunk house and barn would go.

Joyce remembers being surprised that none of the 1880 buildings fell apart dur- ing the move despite their construction with outdated supplies, like square nails.

The big move of the build- ings even made it into the Times in 1972.

The house, which had faced the highway before, was placed on the land to face north, because Bill believed it should, Joyce said. Bill made a good decision, she said, because that positioning allows the house to handle the weather well.

In addition to moving the four buildings on their prop- erty, the couple decided to pick up a small home that sat next to the Dayton grocery store and have it moved to their property as well. The little house was put on a truck and moved from Dayton to Waitsburg in the middle of the night. It had to sit by the bridge over Whiskey Creek overnight until workers could come back the next day and raise the house high enough to get it over the rails of the bridge, Joyce remembers. Some tavern patrons on the way home thought they'd gone crazy seeing that house sitting off the road, she said with a laugh.

The little house has been home to every one of her children during different stages of their lives and is currently used as a retreat space for a rug hooker event Joyce hosts each year.

Unfortunately, after mov- ing all of these buildings away from the highway, the road was never expanded, much to Joyce's frustration.

But, she still loves her house. She and Bill collected antique furniture, including an organ that was used at the Dayton mortuary.

The bunk house is full of furniture they had collected or people had donated that needs to be fixed or stripped. Another of her favorite pieces is an antique wooden library table with claw feet.

The home has five bed- rooms and two bathrooms and Joyce said she loves to keep the house clean and move her furniture around and re-decorate.

The home has large rooms and windows that keep it bright throughout the day.

The main changes to the home were made in the basement and the family added a pool and deck in the backyard.

They also took out the woodstove that made the house filthy, Joyce said, and put in a pellet stove and later a gas fireplace.

"It's a great place to live," Joyce said.

The Touchet River runs right behind the house and she said she loves it when the leaves fall from the trees and she can see it clearly out her windows. Also, she enjoys watching the steelhead in the river sun themselves.

Her old black and white dog Daisy follows her wher- ever she goes on the property.

Jeff Davis, Joyce's son, was visiting recently with his children and grandchildren, and recounted all of the fun stories about growing up in the home. The neighbors were fun and they'd ride their bikes to the highway and back.

"It was a great place to live and grow up," Jeff said. "It was lots of fun."

He remembers raising pigs on the property and the rule was they had to feed the animals before feeding themselves. He would tromp out to where the pigs were kept, snow on the ground, freez- ing, in the winter mornings.

When the house was still located by the road, Jeff said he doesn't remember the traffic being loud because there weren't large, rumbling trucks like there are now. He said he and his siblings would stand in the front yard and when trucks would go by, they would make a pulling motion with their arms hoping the truck driv- ers would notice and loudly honk their horns.

When the Davis family moved into the home, Joyce said it still had an outhouse, which she describes as the cutest outhouse she had ever seen. Unfortunately, a wind storm picked it up and set it on its roof and that was the end of that.

Joyce doesn't know what the future will hold for the house and her acreage. She said years ago Bill Jr. had tried to buy it from them, but that never worked out. At this time, she's just unsure.

"My family has kind of wandered away from the area," she said.

Still, she takes care of the home and the yard and she has help with the rest of the acreage. Justin Gagnon takes care of her alfalfa.

She continues to rise each day in the home she loves, feeding the llamas, geese and peacock with Daisy at her side.

"I'll lean over the fence and think 'I'm a lucky wom- an,'" she said. "It's my re- sort."