That was my dad. He never did anything in style. He did everything with style.
That’s the coolest thing I’ve read in a long time!
I used to dream that I went back to the old house and back in time. The front door was open, but the screen door was locked. I’d stand on the stoop trying to call out to the family, but since I was a ghost, I had no voice. I was in an horrific marriage at the time. I think I was trying to reclaim my childhood and my self.
My parents bought our house new in 1951 just before I was born. It was one of a half-block of nearly identical semi-attached houses in Queens. I last looked at in 35 years ago and it looked fine, and judging from Zillow it is still in great shape and priced absurdly high, but not as high as the house I live in now.
My wife grew up in a house from the 1880s or so, which her father sold just before the crash. Since that time someone has renovated it extensively before putting it on the market, and it looks great. Much better than when she lived there.
The farmhouse in which I grew up was built by my parents and they moved in a year before I was born. They sold it when I was in my 40s. I drive by there occasionally and always marvel at how the small trees that I helped Dad plant are now mature and huge. The people that bought the house still live there and are always friendly and accommodating if we want to visit.
Off-topic, but if you want to see some video of a massive house that was recently moved, check this out.
Way cool! Thanks much!
My mother bought a house after my father was killed when I was almost eight. She lived there until she died in February 2020. I found that I wasn’t sentimental at all about getting rid of it. Though, that might have been tempered by the fact that the pandemic was just getting started and I just wanted to get it cleared out and be done with it. I might have approached it differently in normal times. I haven’t been by there since we sold it. But I was glad we sold it to a couple instead of the many investors who were vying for it.
We moved nine times before my father’s death, never in one place for more than a year. And always within a few miles. It was a poor part of town and is even worse off now. Childhood stories were always told with a reference to where we were living, “you cut your head when we lived on Wellington”, so I know the names of all but two streets we lived on.
Several years ago, I decided to track down those places using google maps. I knew the address of the house we lived in when my father died so I started there. That house is still there but looks so small now. The place before that was only two streets over so I searched around and found that one. It’s a duplex and still there but the tiny grocery on the corner has been replaced by an Exxon gas station. I tried to find the house where I lived in first grade by finding the school. We lived down the street from it and I walked to school every day but nothing on that street looked familiar. Before that we had lived in an apartment next to some railroad tracks. I didn’t know the street name but had very distinct memories of how it looked. I looked at all the neighborhoods near the RR track in that area and actually found the apartments. They are in pretty bad shape but still there. The house before that was across the street from an aunt and uncle’s house where they had lived for many decades so that was easy to find. Also still there. The one before that was near a small creek and I don’t know the name of the street. I had no luck with that. I couldn’t find a creek anywhere in that general area so it’s probably long gone. There are three previous places but I only know street names. I looked up and down those streets, but, of course, I was too young to have memories of the exact houses. I’ve got to say that wandering around with google maps is awesome.
It was very interesting to take that trip down memory lane. It feels like I have more memories of all of those places than I do in the house I eventually grew up in. My father was a very restless, unstable man and life was very unpredictable (in hindsight, he was probably bi-polar). But as a child it made things exciting and memorable. There was always some thing or some place new to explore.
FWIW there’s this program:
The participants bid on these homes…I remember one episode where the winning bidder had to bail because the home wouldn’t survive the move. Rather than building on top of the slab, the walls of the home grabbed around its base, eagle claw style. He ate the loss, basically.
We kids got to spend weeks at a time at my grannie’s ancient home out in the country, on a small lake. And the whole family would go out there every weekend. Ahhh, the huge noon dinners, sleeping out on the porch in hammocks, a sandy beach and an acre of very-climable trees…
Luckily, when my grandma had to sell it, another grandma bought it and had her extended family over every weekend!
But then she had to move, and sold it to a younger woman who promised she’d keep it true to its roots (the oldest house in the area, of historical value).
Well, so much for promises. Turns out the woman had plans to bulldoze the place and build a McMansion. Thank god the local historical society got wind of that and convinced (or bribed? blackmailed? No one will talk…) her to donate the old house.
So the most precious house from my childhood still stands! Just had to get trucked seven miles from Amy Belle Lake to the Richfield (WI) Historical Park.
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The very first place we lived in when I was a baby was an apartment building, across the street from a huge greenhouse which was separated from the street by a large koi pond. The greenhouse is still there, but no koi pond. The apartment building is now a park.
I’ve been looking at my parents house on Google map. I remember mowing that hill so many times. Raking the pine needles in the Fall. The tree was much too close to the house and my dad eventually had it cut down.My dad and I did so many yard projects. I can still see some of them in the recent photos.
I get sentimental thinking about the years living there. I visited for holidays after college. I’d give anything to go back and see my extended family again. I should have visited more often while they were still alive.
My parents eventually built a single story retirement home. We just sold it two years ago. I didn’t have the same memories there and no attachments.
Looking on Google maps, it looks like they tore it down and built a mini-mansion. It looks nice, but it isn’t anything like what it was.
I (well, we, my sibs and I) spent a LOT of time at Grandma and Grandpa’s house which wasn’t at all far from our house. So, for me it’s sort of like having two childhood homes and both are still standing strong while nearing 100 years old. My sister in fact ended up owning both homes, she’s the “slumlord” of the family in a more desirable part of town(not really a bad landlord, just funny to us that she owns a significant piece of an expensive neighborhood). I don’t feel any real strong emotional attachment to these homes, I’m glad family owns them, sure, but if they left the family? Eh, could I have the chandeliers from Grandma’s first?
Yes my parents still live there. I live down the street. The house was built in 1962 and my folks have lived there since 1976.
Lately I’ve been pondering what I’d do with the house when they pass. It’s a slab ranch, which is really desireable for elderly people. My house is a raised ranch so not as desireable. I will be elderly once mom dies. I should probably take the house.
My initial childhood home was bought by the next door neighbor, who connected the two houses and used my childhood house as a display area for the flower shop that he ran out of the other. You can actually see my house here. They’re both for sale now, and I’ve thought about buying the property back, but never actually took any steps to do so.
When I moved from there, I started living here, which was later bought by another family after we left. My older brother was friends with the people who bought it.
A few years later, the house burned to the ground. It’s since been rebuilt and is apparently now for sale.
It would be awesome to buy back your old home. Especially if you have a business to run out of the extra house.
I had thought about buying my grandparents house. But the people that bought it had a electrical fire just before Christmas. Probably the Christmas lights.
The home I lived in all through elementary school (1956-1964) is still standing. I went past it about 20 years ago when I moved back to Phoenix-metro. Like so many have said, it looks so small. Being in a former orchard, it had a dozen grapefruit trees on the lot, front and back yards, and they’re all gone – likely grew senescent and were removed.
The one that makes me really sad is my grandparent’s home in Santa Barbara, where my mother grew up and we spent virtually every summer vacation. It’s still standing and in fine shape but when grandmother had to be put in an assisted living facility circa 1976, her children – Mom, her brother and sister – sold it for $48,000.
My brother and I begged them not to do it, even trying to enlist the aid of our cousins since we didn’t have the money between us, but they weren’t interested. I just looked it up on Zillow and the estimate is $1.7-million but that’s not important; I dearly wish we had a pied-à-terre in Santa Barbara.
Which one?
I can find all but two.
The one in Wisconsin, which was torn down to widen a highway, & one in Chicago, because I simply don’t know where it was (I was very small, & we only lived there for a month or two).
Dad wasn’t in the military, but he kept picking fights with his boss, or getting fired, & then we’d have to move, over & over again.
I was always the “new kid”, always a stranger. I never bothered to learn peoples’ names, because we wouldn’t be living there is a very few years.
I moved away from the area in 2006, but a niece of mine (her mother still lives in the town) told me the place was torn down and replaced with an ugly apartment house. Didn’t bother me much, still have the memories. Dad bought it around 1946 or so because it gave him the opportunity to walk to work (he was a banker). It was a pier-and-beam frame with a screen porch and a big back yard. There were two big fruitless mulberries I loved to climb plus an old building with an ancient mesquite that leaned just enough that I could run up it onto the roof. It was the place where a bully and his friend decided it would be a good idea to beat me up. Didn’t work. When later my parents couldn’t take care of themselves my brother sold it (it was full of termites by then). The area now has turned commercial, and when the old hamburger joint where the high school kids gathered was replaced by a sushi bar I decided you just can’t go home again.
I just checked google maps – it is still there. The house itself isn’t too remarkable (L shaped ranch), but the location is. It is on a dead end street with a wooded ravine. I spent lots of time in those woods and they are still there. The railroad tracks are gone (they were rarely used) and are now a hike/bike trail.
My freshman year of college my moved to Door County WI. I spent 3 summers and some time after graduation living there. When my mom passed away a sister bought it as a cottage and I go there once a year or so.
Brian
This is the house in Fort Lauderdale which I consider the house I grew up in, although it was my grandparents’ house actually. It doesn’t look like it’s changed much, although if I work with Google Street View, it seems they may have enclosed the back porch. Zillow tells me it was built the year I was born, I did not know that! I don’t recall my grandparents living anywhere else. I was very happy there.
