Should you ever/never go back again?

Miscellaneous and Personal Stuff I Must Share
21

My best childhood friend lived in a cute bungalow. Her parents were amazing gardeners. The were massive flower beds surrounding the back yard, and everything was as neat as a pin. There was a section of the back yard that had a swath of evergreen trees that kind of cut the backyard in half. The back half was a huge vegetable garden. I remember being kind of envious of her home. My home had 4 kids and though it was clean, it was usually chaotic - kids’ messes. Her’s was the complete opposite.

Her dad died about 30 years ago, and her mom remarried. She sold the house and moved into her new husband’s house. About 10 years ago, she and I went through the old neighborhood and took a look at her childhood home. We could not believe our eyes. The new owner’s had put up a tall wooden fence on part of the front yard. There were giant stuffed animals (the kind you win at a fair) tied to the fence. There was a carousel horse on top of the porch roof. The flower beds were gone and the beautiful swath of evergreens had been torn up and giant rocks were placed in the area. They had numerous artificial Christmas trees “planted” among the rocks! I thought she was going to cry, throw up, or both!

22

You can never go home.

Some of the best times I ever had was at a particular duty station I served at during the 80’s as a young PFC. So many outrageous events and good times with buddies. Time passed and years later I got orders back to the same place as a sergeant. I was older and had a good deal more responsibilities. When I got there I found the environment hadn’t changed a great deal, but there were ghosts everywhere. Every corner had some sort of memory associated with it, but I realized none of my friends were there and not only that but I had changed. I found the return experience to be comparable to listening to classic rock radio for the first few weeks; all sorts of recollections triggered by various songs at first but the playlist repeats over and over until eventually the memories are wallpapered over and cease to be triggers as one goes about their quotidian existence.

23

Yep, my parents and I were visiting the area where they grew up, and after visiting Dad’s sister (who still lives in their childhood home) we decided to go find Mom’s home and see what the area looks like. Only, we couldn’t find the house, which was a cool 1820s building that my grandpa had built a beautiful porch on. Come to find out, a recent owner had torn it down and it’s now a vacant lot.

Super disappointing.

24

When I was a kid, my aunt and uncle owned a large house outside of Placerville, CA. It was the proverbial “house on the hill.” It was built around 1850, and sat on several acres of land, overlooking their little town. It had a long dirt driveway (shared by other homes), with a dirt parking lot outside their back door. The first floor had a huge parlor, with a gigantic fireplace, with ceilings 15 feet up. It was the most awesome place ever. They sold it in the mid-90s.

My parents moved to the area in 1999. When I’m in the area, it’s not uncommon to see the house as I’m driving by, but it’s from a distance at the bottom of the hill. Once, not long after my parents moved there, we drove up the driveway and by house for a closer view. There was some new modern structure, like a small house, taking up a good portion of the parking lot.

I looked it up a few years ago on Google Maps, and saw that the driveway and parking lot were paved, and a swimming pool had been put in. Le sigh…

My parents now live about a mile away from the house. I haven’t visited since they moved, but perhaps the next time I’m there I’ll drive through that driveway and check it out. But then again, maybe not.

25

Yes… I tried to find the places that had not changed, just to reassure myself that I wasn’t hallucinating. Mostly, it was the natural aspects that had not changed. The river was still as it ever was. My old neighborhood was there in every way that was physically apparent…but its spirit was gone. No kids riding everywhere on bikes, playing in their yards, making trips to the corner store. To be fair, the kid population was much larger in the 60s bc of the Baby Boom, and
so there were more of us. Now, people have to bust their asses at three jobs to afford these modest little homes, and the kids are much fewer or they are elsewhere, inside the house, perhaps, but I saw little sign of them. Also, there are quite a few rentals…none of them were rented during the era I grew up there. People bought and stayed. It was not perfect in those times, though. If you add the problems of child abuse, spousal abuse, alcoholism…you see how the dark side existed there, too. But people kept that carefully hidden. They joked about it, even. It was sick, really. So I guess I don’t miss that part…

Still, many beautiful fields were gone, valleys are stuffed with crappy housing, and the little side roads where I once necked with all obsession had become parking lots for Home Depot or a McDonald’s. An old song entitled, “Don’t It Make You Wanna Go Home,” encapsulates of what your are speaking perfectly. I give it a listen ever so often. Our memories have been paved over, and that’s all part of a bigger problem, as we know.

And that place had many farms, although it was close to a big city…many of the kids I attended school with had farm chores they did before coming to school. It was interesting to hear them talk about it. I visited some of them, the muddy farmyards are now…you guessed it, a huge shopping center for a Walmart. If I squint I can see the hillside on the far end of the lot where I and my farm friend looked at her dad’s cattle. Cornfields abounded, too, and we played in those. Again, those corny areas are now a parking lot with grocery store, nail salon, and a new trend: testosterone treatment center, ugh.

When I looked upon those things, my heart felt a bit heavy and it felt like grief. I am in my later 60s, so it is to be expected that I might feel this way, and I don’t long for the society of that time, as I said there were serious problems…but I do long for the community.

26

Using Google’s Street View, I visited the neighborhood where I grew up, and checked my old house and nearby neighbors’ properties. At first I couldn’t find my childhood home, although I was sure about the homes to the left and right of it. Then I selected a view of a few years back to compare, and discovered that my old house had been leveled and a new, bigger mansion built on exactly the same lot.

I always had dreams of going “home again” and asking the occupants if I could look around. Was my dad’s built-in, sturdy workbench still there? That doesn’t make any sense now.

So I guess the neighborhood is moving upscale like so many. The one thing that puzzled me was they changed the last digit for the house number from 9 to 7 (which is one reason I had a hard time finding it). There was no sequence problem – plenty of numbers were available if the property had been divided.

27

We looked at realtor dot com to see if there were pictures of our old Craftsman house, and there were, and someone had HGTV-ed it: the breakfast nook was gone, and the bidet was gone, and everything had been made shiny and open, and I hated it.

Then I looked at the dinky little house I grew up in, and they had done the same.

Yech.

28

You should have seen down Alexandria, Virginia circa 1960. Believe it or not, there were other businesses besides restaurants, bars, and chain outlets.

29

A couple years ago I started a thread about visiting my childhood home, and reminiscing about the past. When I wrote that thread my mother owned it and still lived in it. She died last year, and now my brother owns it.

As I mentioned in that thread… when I go over there, a flood of (mostly good) memories comes rushing back. It’s on two acres of land, and I love seeing the creek I once played in, and the basement that my father fixed up. Sadly, though, the home is in poor shape, and my brother is not doing anything about it.

From about 1977 through 1984 my father had a boat on Lake Erie, and he would go up there on the weekends in the summer. I often accompanied him. I made many friends at the marina, and have fond memories of boating, goofing around, etc. I think the last time I visited was around 1985. I plan on visiting the marina soon (it’s about a 3.5 hour drive from my house), just to walk around and reminisce.

30

A lot of the places I would go back to simply don’t exist anymore. Three places I lived when I was single are gone; my high school was replaced by a supermarket; the little farm my grandparents lived on has been subdivided; my other grandparents’ home is now the parking lot of a CVS (not even the store, just the parking lot).

The two houses I lived in the longest are still there. I go by one of them often enough that I’m used to the changes it’s gone through since I was a kid. When I went past the other one a few years ago I was shocked how small it seemed compared to what I remembered.

31

Just out of idle curiosity I Googled the address of the first house I lived in from birth till second grade and found it on Redfin – not on the market, but it had all the usual sale photos to prowl through. The interior had gone through any number of updatings, which didn’t bother me since it was so long ago I have only dim memories of it, and the exterior hasn’t changed much. For a house built in 1900 it’s holding up well.

Two things did surprise me, though – one of the photos was of the shed out back my Dad used to keep tools and handyman stuff in! Still there! After well more than half a century!

The other thing was the estimated value. It last sold in 2009 for $394,500. I daresay my parents didn’t get more than middle five figures for it. The current estimated value is at least $842,000; Zillow had an estimate of $939,000.

I’m glad it’s still there and in good shape, and I’m really happy Dad’s shed still survives. But I’m not planning to go back for a tour. There are a couple of things I have some dim memory of that I suspect will be gone.

ETA: The neighborhood hasn’t gone downhill – hard to do when it’s in the Highlands neighborhood, halfway up a hill, in a desireable neighborhood.

32

There are two places about which I have a deep nostalgia. Sadly, both now exist only in my memories.

The first is the country cottage where I spent the summers of my childhood. I have great memories of frolicking in the lake and the usual kid things, but also odd ones like the sweet faint smell of pine trees after a rain shower, the sound of a whip-poor-will in the night, and the wonderful aroma of hot baked goods when the truck from the village bakery stopped by and opened its doors.

I haven’t been there since I was a kid, but I recently took a tour via Google Street View, and the place is unrecognizable. It’s become completely urbanized, everything paved over, and all the cottages replaced with permanent year-round houses. There is no magic there any more, not even for a kid.

The other place is (or was) the medium-sized town where I spent the formative years of my young adulthood, living a carefree life with no worries and virtually no responsibilities. My job at the time, managing a small research data center and doing some programming for research projects, to my mind was not a job at all – I loved computers and this was a grand playground which I was paid to play in.

I eventually married and moved away to a big city, both of us for our careers. After I retired I briefly though (not very seriously) of moving back, but soon realized how ridiculous that would be. My friends and family are here where I am now, the days of carefree worry-free living are way in the past, and furthermore that town is now a full-fledged big city with all its attendant problems.

Indeed, you can never go home again.

33

There was a DIY reality show on Discovery?? or HGTV. That interviewed homeowners shortly before they sold a house. The people showed off treasured memories and decorative projects that they had done.

Then the new homeowners were filmed during the renovation. The show brought back the original people to see the changes.

I found it painful to watch. Obviously people have different tastes. But nearly all the former homeowners were distressed with the changes. They had lived there for decades and raised families.

I stopped watching after a few episodes. Too voyeuristic for me.

I know my house will change after its sold. The new owners can and should do whatever they want.
I don’t want to see it afterwards.

34

Understood entirely.

My regular painter has occasionally questioned a color choice, and I’ve told him, whoever comes after me can do what they like, I don’t care, because I’m never (willingly) moving again, so I’ll do what I want.

35

I’ve gone by my childhood and teenagehood homes(we moved when I was 13, so a nice demarcation there)

From the outside both of them have been well kept, probably better than my family did.

I can’t go back to my great-grandmother’s home, which was my second home as a child. Two weeks after she died, it burned to the ground. The next owners built a truly ugly house.

36

My parents still live in the same home that they bought in 1975, when I was ten years old, so I do go back there regularly. :wink: It still mostly looks the same, too; the last major renovation they did was the kitchen and dining room, and that was around 1987 (when I was in grad school).

The house we lived in before that is about a thirty-minute drive from where I live now. I swing by there every couple of years, just to see how the old neighborhood looks. From the exterior, our old house looks pretty much the same, except for the steep, long driveway that I remember from my childhood; adult me realizes that the hill wasn’t steep, and the driveway wasn’t actually that long. :smiley:

I know that that house was fully remodeled on the inside at some point in the early 2000s (it had been custom-built for my family, and we had moved into it in 1968); Google Maps aerial view shows me that, at some point, an addition was added to the back of the house. While I’m curious to see what it looks like on the inside now, I’ve never been curious enough to ring the bell.

The houses where both of my sets of grandparents lived when I was a kid are still standing, and look pretty much the same as they did when I was a kid. I drive by both of them every once in a while, but again, I don’t stop in.

One thing that I keep telling myself I should do sometime is check out the building which was the hardware store that my family owned when I was in high school (I helped to build that building!). We closed the hardware store just as I was graduating from high school; it was later a roller rink for a long while, and is now a non-denominational church.

37

I remember packing up and moving from a apartment. Taking down our pictures and loading the furniture changed the feel of the place

There was a disconnect. It didn’t feel like home anymore.

It was a rental we hadn’t done anything to the place. I didn’t have any strong connection except for our decorations.

38

You bought a house for $147,500 in 1966, that is now worth 400K? Are you sure there isn’t a typo in there somewhere?

39

They corrected it in a subsequent post - it was 1996 :slight_smile:.

40

I just recalled that I visited North Dallas a few years ago and drove by where I lived and my best friend. Both neighborhoods looked roughly the same (though the trees were way bigger), but my old house had very visible security cameras on the corners of the eaves, and my friend’s had a Neighborhood Crime Watch sign (do those actually do anything!?). So, maybe things did change a bit…