So, last night as I was thinking about twenty years (20!) here, I started thinking about all the other places I have lived in my life that I can remember. I decided that would be an interesting "historical" post about my life and how it formed me into who I have become. Some of the moves I made were very emotional and took me a long time to get over the trauma of the move. Others meant nothing as is usually the case with children, and other were happy moves, of course.
The first home I remember living in was the basement of my Uncle Gordon and Aunt Helen's home. It was after WWII and we were living there until sometime after my brother, Allan, was born. I can remember falling asleep in the back seat of the family car one night on the way home from an outing and as my mother carried Allan into the house I feinted sleep and waited for my dad to pick me up and carry me into the house. I had been the baby for 3 years and still wanted a touch of the attention I had gotten before Allan was born. I was crushed when he woke me up and made me walk into the house and get ready for bed. Allan's birth and that ride home are my only memories of that home.
The next home we had was the upstairs of my Grandma/Grandpa Miller's house. It was a two bedroom apartment that she could rent out as one or two rentals. She and Grandpa rented it as a one bedroom to us and my uncle, Daniel, used the second bedroom as his room. I don't know how long we were there but my memories here were of my bed having stars on the ceiling that glowed when you first turned out the lights at night. I loved that. I remember playing with Allan in our kitchen when he was in his low chair. Also, Danny used to tease me a lot when I was downstairs in Grandma's kitchen. I remember the family laughing but at the time I didn't think it was funny when he would hold my toys or balloons above my head in the same way people tease kids today. The other memory I had of the apartment was at Christmas we hung up stockings and we all laughed when my mother hung one of her nylons so she would get more treats. She was only 21 so that totally makes sense to me now and still makes me laugh.
Then came the 2 bedroom quonset hut that was made available for GIs after the war. We moved there when I was 4 or 5 because it was there that I began kindergarten. I also started dancing lessons while in that house. I remember we had a big kitchen fire while living in that place and had our pictures in the paper for it. Must have been a really slow news day! I lived there through kindergarten and at least part of first grade but maybe longer. There was a big field across the street where the neighbor kids would play and I remember the ice truck slowly driving down the streets waiting for the ladies to get their ice for the ice boxes. In the summer they would throw up chips of ice as we followed. One day I had on brand new shoes that I was so proud of. My parents hadn't wanted me to have them because they were slip on penny loafers but I dearly loved them so they finally gave in. I hadn't even had them for a week when one day a "big" mean dog was scaring Allan and me in front of our yard. To be the big brave sister I kicked at the dog, and my shoe came off, the dog picked it up and ran away with it never to be seen again. Man, did I get a tongue lashing for that one! One day, Allan locked himself in the bathroom at this place and someone had to finally break the window and crawl in and unlock the door from the inside to get him out. This was the house where the two of us went through many childhood illnesses also.
Sometime while in the quonset hut my parents separated for a while. I don't know where dad went but we went to live with my Aunt Nellie for a few months. I would walk to school with her boys and slept with my mother in a big bed in one bedroom while Allan was in the crib in another bedroom. I loved her house because it had a sleeping porch upstairs and that seemed magical to me - even though it was winter and no one slept there in the winter. I remember going to sleep at night reciting "The Night Before Christmas" poem to my mother until I knew it perfectly.
It seems to me the next place was a one bedroom apartment on Robert (?) Street. Again, I remember going to school but Allan had a babysitter when both parents worked. It was a basement apartment and the laundry room was nearby and I can remember playing in there while wet clothes hung over head to dry. I had a very close friend in another apartment that I would go to school with and we would often get to play together. I was so sad when we moved and I was never able to see her again.
I think it was after this that my parents split up again and we went to live with my mother's mother and her husband. My mother and Allan slept in the big bed downstairs. I shared a big bed with my Granny in the upstairs bedroom. Her husband, Les, slept in a little bed in the storage room. I believe I was in third grade while we were here. I remember we started to learn to write cursive and it was so much fun. We weren't here long but when we moved, we moved to a 3 room converted chicken coop.
I think the chicken coop was in Lake Elmo but it seemed so far out into the country. It had one bedroom, a chemical toilet that my dad had to empty each day into the outhouse, and only the kitchen sink for all cooking and washing. Allan and I shared bunk beds then but I remember we could hardly move in the bedroom with beds for us all and the rest of the furniture. But we had a front screened porch and I used to play school with Allan and try to teach him what I had learned at school. I even had a little chalk board that I loved. The school here was a two roomed school that had 3 grades per room. When I moved to that school the kids in my class had already learned cursive so the teacher said I had to learn on my own and catch up by practicing. I was terrible and felt so stupid because I couldn't always read what was on the board. I think that was the school where Allan started first grade when I went into fourth. We also had a huge garden that I had to spend time helping to weed the summer we were there. We had lots of strawberries that summer.
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