A yellow stucco house in Garden Grove, CA, from the time I was born until 1960, when my dad was promoted and transferred to Santa Paula. I now live about three miles from that house.
Funny story about it. Dad had set up a pole in the front near the mailbox, fron which he had hung a shingle with the street number and the rubric: BROWN’S HOME FOR BOYS (Mom and Dad had started their family in 1953, and were raising five sons as of September, 1959). When Mom gave birth for the sixth time (September 12), the neighbors were shocked and delighted to learn that it was a girl at last. But this meant that the shingle was going to have to come down, and they formed a mob to advance on the house and tear it down.
Dad outsmarted them, though. By the time they arrived, he had hung a smaller sign from the bottom of it, reading GIRLS’ ANNEX.
A rental house in a suburb of the major Western city where I was born. I lived there for two years, then we moved to Arkansas before settling in West Texas.
I grew up in a modest middle-class home built in the early '50s when suburbs were being mass-produced…and babies were booming. I lived there 18 years. My parents lived there until their deaths 60 years later.
The neighborhood still looks much the same, except there’s a lot more shade because trees have grown. Nice starter homes for young families.
3 bedroom ranch style house just across the border between Daly City and San Francisco, the Westlake district. It was arch-typical suburbia which degraded into a low-income neighborhood. I went through just a couple years ago and the whole area has greatly improved. I’m assuming this is spill-over from the high cost of living in The City.
A small rental home that we move out of when I was only a few months old. But I had the ability to experience it again when, 7 years later, we moved back to the area and rented the house right next door. The house is still there and every now and then I look it up on Google Earth just to make sure. Oddly, not much has changed in the immediate neighborhood although I can see that a small addition has been done to the house. I can still see the street a block away that was somewhat on a hill and that was closed (informally) when it snowed so the kids could sled on it.
A small house not too far from where my mother now lives. Our familywas there until the Christmas break when I was in second grade.
The house is for sale now, it’s been kept in shape by the various owners since I was there fifty-four years ago. If I could get out of this house it’s one I wouldn’t mind living in, much smaller than what I now have.
My parents lived in two different apartments after I was born, but before the bought the house I grew up in. We moved there when I was 2½. Lived there until I was 15.
A Bungalow in midtown Atlanta. I locked myself in the one and only bathroom when I was 2 or 3 years old. My father got transferred and they sold the house to our next door neighbors who happened to be my God-parents when I was four years old.
A wonderful Eichler with glass walls and an atrium that my parents built just before I was born. I lived there until I was 18, and my parents continued to live there until I was 25. There’s a fun discussion of Eichler living starting at post #67 in this thread.
I honestly don’t know. I know that at one point, early in my life, we lived in the house that was owned by my grandparents, next door to them, but I don’t remember it, and I don’t know if it was the first house I lived in or not.
A rental apartment in Pacific Grove, CA. We were there for less than a year (Dad was in the Army).
My dad and I went back to Carmel/Monterey a few years ago, for the first time since 1971, and the apartment is still there – Dad said it looks exactly the same! Of course, rents are a bit higher now.
A house my parents got right before I was born, for $18,500 (1968). It had the traditional layout – four rooms and 1/2 bath downstairs, four rooms and full bath upstairs. It had a wrap-around front porch and an upstairs porch. It had a cool staircase straight upstairs from the foyer, with a landing and back stairs to the dining room/kitchen hallway. Right outside my window was a beautiful dogwood tree.
When I was a teenager my father had to cut down most of the tree. When I was in college, I returned to school from my house and went “home” again to the condo my parents had moved to, which didn’t have a room for me. Life goes on.
