From time to time I’ve mentioned my childhood home but I don’t believe I’ve ever shown it to you. The picture above is of the house where my parents lived when they were first married and where I spent my first ten years. The picture was taken very shortly after my parents moved in.
One of the first things they did after moving in was to redo the steps in front of the house and put a brick railing around the porch. I strongly suspect that the work on the steps and porch was done by my dad and his law school pal, Jack Fisher. Although that picture was taken right after they’d redone the steps, that’s very much what the house looks like now. Subsequent owners have done almost no maintenance. I believe that tiny spruce in the foreground, looking for all the world like a weed, was my parents’ first Christmas tree.
When they moved in the house consisted of a small living room with adjoining dining room, a kitchen, bathroom, and one tiny bedroom. In addition to the steps and porch they also put an addition on the back of the house—a single large room. That room was shared by my me and my siblings. It was our bedroom, our playroom. Each of us took a corner and when my youngest siblings were born they got the bedroom and my parents took the fourth corner. That’s my mom standing on the new addition looking glum.
I think that you can see that when I said that it was modest I was sugar-coating it. It was a dive, a pit. But my mom did a good job of making it into a home and, well, it’s still home to me even though well over a half century has passed. I cried when we left.
That would be a highly desirable property, if inexpensive, down here. Monroe has lots of attractive bungalows.
And your mother improved instantly any house she entered. Part of being an “It” girl.
My mother had only two homes in her entire life. The house about which I write in this post was the first. The house she built with my father and in which she lived until her death was the other.