My sister and I went to see our old farm last summer. I hadn’t been there in about 15 years. It was quite a shock, to say the least.
The farmhouse was a different color (white instead of yellow) and had siding. The porches had been rebuilt and some of the big oak trees in the yard were gone.
The most shocking thing of all was that the acres of open fields surrounding the house are now completely grown over with pine trees. The 100-year-old barn where we kept our cows and my horse was also gone, apparently razed to make way for another driveway. 
The most shocking thing of all was how much smaller it all seemed. I remember complaining about how far we always had to walk to the pasture, which, unless it and the remaining barns been moved, are actually only a few hundred yards from the house.
I drove past my childhood home not too long ago. When I was a kid, my mom had beautiful gardens all around our property. Neighbors used to come stand in front of our gardens to take their Easter pictures. There was a big sassafras tree in the back yard that shaded the patio and a huge forsythia hedge that shielded the side of the house from the street. They’re all gone. The yard looks naked.
And the place looks tiny. It wasn’t all that big anyway, but in my memories, it wasn’t quite so compact.
I wouldn’t live there again on a bet. But I would like to see what it looks like inside. If it had been for sale, I might have made an appointment to see it.
I recently went back to my childhood home. I was disappointed to find out that Haitian drug dealers had moved into the neighborhood. After my war buddy’s sister ODed and the gang threatened my family, I decided enough was enough and decided to dish out my own brand of angry street justice. After killing a bunch of his henchmen and tossing the gang leader off a 20 story building (where he impaled himslef on a pile of re-bars), the neighborhood is a much nicer place.
It burned down two decades ago… There is no ‘there’ there.
I live in the same condo complex where my parents lived when I was born. Not the same unit, but a few blocks away. We moved to Alexandria when I was two, though, so I don’t remember it. I do remeber the house in Alexandria, though, and maybe someone can help me: Does anyone know if the neighborhood around Pegram and Richenbacher is still nice and suburban? That corner was pretty close to where we lived.
I drive by my first house (birth - 14) quite often. They haven’t changed it much (they did paint what had been firehouse red trim to a nicer dark green. Firehouse red. WHAT was mom thinking? Then again, before they stuccoed the house the siding was painted a painful Peptol Bismol pink. shudder)
I haven’t been inside since I was 16. After we moved, mom and dad rented the house out. The people that lived there destroyed it. Huge holes in the carpet. Holes in walls. It was sad.
My house now is of the same era and is fairly similar, but without the 1/2 upstairs. Kinda like being home.
The house I miss most is my grandparents. As I have most of their furniture, I guess I feel that loss more. Their pretty little house was torn down and is now an assisted living apartment complex. We do have the bricks from the front of their house and some of the plantings at my parents were straight from Grandpa’s garden. When looking at houses a few years ago, I toured one exactly like theirs, but worse, LOL.
Change and time sometimes suck.
Both of my childhood homes I grew up in have been trashed. My early childhood home was a 100 year old 2 story home. I heard they gutted a deer in the living room over the furnace heat. That ought to have smelled terrible. The peach trees were cut down. I never saw the inside and never wanted to. I did however see the house I grew up in for 16 years and graduated high school there. My father worked very hard to improve this house from the old farm house it was, building a circular driveway, porch, butlershed etc. I found a friend of a friend kind of thing that had bought the house and went with my friend Robert and got to see the old home. It’s true you can never go home again. The son fixed up race cars in the butler building “his shop” and smoked marijuana. The carpet inside I think was color rejects, bright orange and purple and hot pink (why do companies even make such colors of carpet). The walls had a few holes here and there (stoned stuppers and anger don’t mix). The back porch Dad and I worked so hard to build had nothing but the frame left. Oh and don’t forget the trailer in the front yard. It was just really sad.
Reading through this thread reminds me of how very lucky I am - my parents are still alive and still live in the only house they’ve ever lived in as a couple. They bought the house in 1952 and have lived there ever since. I’ll be home for Xmas.
My childhood home burned down a couple years after we moved out (the new owner fell asleep smoking, apparently). I have visited the lot a couple times, mostly to say hi to the black walnut tree that provided shade and ammunition throughout my childhood.
I still live in my hometown and see my childhood home just about every day. I has been an antique shop, a bridal shop and now serves as a dance studio. My wife actually tried on wedding dresses in what used to be my bedroom. She informs me it was painted pastel pink by then. I have not been inside since high school but I’m sure, having been home to various businesses over the years, the interior would be unrecognizable.
Ditto. Only my parents built the house in 1959. I can’t imagine letting go when the time comes to sell. I only live about 3 miles from there now.
chcoco, I guess you can always go home, it’s just that you may not like what you find, or find it to feel like home.
I have been inside the home in Michigan where I spent a few years before I turned 5. I didn’t really remember it anyway but I did remember our neighbors across the street who were still living there.
I sometimes drive past another home I lived in during elementary school. It looks really different with talls trees everywhere (that we had planted). My parents still live in the house that I spent the last 8 years in before I graduated. While it is technically home (and I live but a few miles from it), I don’t have particularly good memories from there. I wouldn’t be heartbroken if I never saw it again after my mom & stepdad move out.
The home where I first lived in a little town in Southern Ontario (0-2 years) was renovated from what used to be a barn, into a duplex at some point in the early part of the last century. I still remember what it looked like inside, where everything was, etc. When my wife-to-be visited me in 1997, we went there to see it, and it was gone. So was the oak tree my father planted in the yard when I was born. It had grown into one of the largest trees I have ever seen, by the mid-'80s.
The house where I grew up (3-16) in another nearby town is still there, but it looks very different. It used to have white asbestos siding (probably good that they removed it!) and black trim. Now it has slate grey aluminum siding and red trim, and they knocked out the two windows on either side of the living room and put in a bay window. My dad built a garage that attached to the house behind the kitchen, and they’ve turned it into another room, so the garage door is gone. The two trees in the front yard are gone, the hedges are gone, the ditch has been filled in, and what used to be a well a very long time before we lived there (that I remember mainly for the reverberations when you shouted into it) is gone.
What really bums me out is that what used to be the huge field across the street, bordered by 5 sets of railroad tracks, is now a donut shop and parking lot, and there is only one set of tracks these days. And the grain elevator that they built at the end of the street in the early '70s is also gone!
I might like to see the inside of the house now, but it’d probably be very disappointing to see what’s become of it. Maybe my memories of it are something I shouldn’t tamper with. But hey, I’m 1500 miles away now, and the chances of my going back there for anything are negligible.
My sister and I call it, “the olde shack house”
a little wooden shack,maybe,300 square ft? apartment size.
I can’t beleive the Termites haven’t eaten it.
I still vividly remember the Floor Plan,
SunRays filtering Thru with dust particles I fantasized were
Sunbeams.
guilty_guy I also live in the house in which I grew up.
Going WAY back to the OP, here’s a good site that will allow you to see entire pages of those “hex” colors. (from “000000” to “FFFFFF”)
http://www.1728.com/colrchrt.htm
Guilty? Guilty Guy? Nope, no one here by that name. OHHHHHH! Guilty guy instead of quiltguy. Now I get it. No foul, just an error.
Well, not nessisarily my home, but my friends home. I do have my own home obviously which in fact I still do live in, but my friends home is where I spent most of my time, they lived on a mountain and whenever it would rain or snow I would have to almost live there… They didn’t have a lot of money so the house had foreclosed. Now, new people have moved in, they’re deffinitly full of money, a blan white door has now been replaced by a nice shimmering red beautiful glass door. Which also has a nice hi-tech key pad on it. The pool that was once there was taken out and now it is used as a fire pit… The deck that attatched the upper floor to the bottom had collapsed due to a harsh winter, they now replaced it almost looking the same but not quite. These people seem sketchy, various signs of " BEWARE OF DOG " occur through out the property… Garage has a hi-tech code system on it, and when you walk past the door, the dog is always staring at you… Neighbors say they have drugs kept down where my friends mothers room was… At night , I’ll drive up just to look around and I can occasionaly see inside where the kitchen was, all re-done with nice granite top counters and new hardwood stairs… If the people weren’t so sketchy, I’d totally ask to see the inside… Eh, guess i’ll wait till they move out.
Is this a joke? You’re walking around on somebody else’s property at night and looking in their windows and checking out the locks - and you think they’re “sketchy”?
Perhaps he’s scared they’re breeding zombies in the basement?
WTF. Zombie threads should be outlawed!!