Fifty Fridays #8

It's hard to look at a house you used to live in as just another piece of real estate.  My paremts bought this house when I was nine.

 It was the first house they would own and I remember how proud we kids were.  It was quite well-known in the community.  It had belonged to the first doctor in the little mill town and so had a status that I didn't really understand at the time.  I only knew it was special.

I remember the the wide steps and the flat concrete tops on the side walls - not railings - that we would run down and then leap off onto the grass. At my wedding, my 10-year-old brother was found on these steps howling at the sky.  He'd helped himself to people's leftover glasses!  In the photo he's standing right on the flat top...quite sober, I think.  Not sure about the one behind the camera, though.  The tiny tree on the right  is the offspring of a huge walnut tree that was toppled in Typhoon Frieda. 

The back yard.  Where we picked cherries from this big old tree.  We ate as many as we could and still Mom had enough to can.  We got so tired of those canned cherries by the end of the winter.  It was always a cause for great joy when June brought the new crop.  My brother kept a chicken in this yard.  Dad had a vegetable garden.  Mom sewed in the sunroom where the big windows are to the right.

This is a side view.  That vine would turn bright red in the fall and was probably not good for the stucco underneath.  I didn't worry about those kind of things then.  We kids would play Kick the Can on summer nights and range all over the several blocks of our neighborhood.  In those days, every house had at least two kids and often more.  There were, ultimately, five in ours.  So, there was never a shortage of ideas for fun outside.  Which was where you wanted to be if you didn't want to get tapped for some chores around the house.  It was a big house and, looking back, I don't know how my mother had the strength or energy to raise us kids and keep the house so clean and tidy.  And she had a hankering to re-decorate every couple of years. 

The other day when we were on our drive to the countryside, we went by the old house.  It's still there and has lots of updating to the inside.  Not so much has changed on the outside, though the picket fence is gone.  You can see it here, if you're curious.  You could buy it for $549,900 if you like it.  I wonder how much Dad paid for it 56 years ago?  Not a question I ever thought to ask.  Wish I had.