The Houses of My Life - Part 2

In the last post about houses I have lived in I ended with us living in a chicken coop. Well, not with the chickens, as the coop had been converted, but to a three room apartment for at least two families. There may have been more but I don't remember others. Anyway, we lived there for part of my third grade and the following summer. I don't remember if I started fourth grade while living there but if so it was not for long. We moved to a house on Blair Street that had been converted to an apartment upstairs and one down. We had the one upstairs that had a tiny living room, a huge (for me) kitchen, and two nice bedrooms. The interesting part of this house was that there was a door leading onto the landing from the living room and also one from the master bedroom. Allan and I shared a room with bunk beds where there was a lot of floor space for us to play in our room. I remember we both were in school there and that we walked to school. While living there my parents fought a lot and I can remember often waking up to them yelling at each other. One time I especially remember they were fighting about my dad catching another man he knew in the house with her. He had come home unexpectedly and Bob (the man's name) had tried to escape notice by leaving by the door going out of the bedroom. Duh, my dad had already seen his car parked outside. When he wasn't in the living room - dad went right back out the front door and met him and hit him as he was trying to run down the stairs. I remember dad threatening mom that he would take the kids and leave her and one day she must have thought he was going to. She picked Allan and me up early from school and took us to the bus and said if dad showed up we were not to get into the car with him. He didn't show up and I don't remember where we went or for how long but I know we were back at the house shortly after that. It was while here that they decided to buy a house with the GI bill backing for a down payment.

We moved to a little red house on Lake Street. The street was only two blocks long and there was a lake at the end of it. We often stopped at the house to see how the progress was on the building of it. One time when we went to check the progress on the interior of the house, it was raining and muddy so we waited in the car for dad to check and come back. Mom (proudly??) pointed out a house on the street behind our house and told me that was where Bob had just moved with his family of six kids. I knew Bob because he worked at the gas station where mom always got her gas near where my dad worked. Here I was in fourth grade and being told that. What was I supposed to think or do with that information? I remember thinking it wasn't going to be a good move.  But we moved in the spring of my fourth grade year. We lived in this house until the summer after tenth grade. I loved it there because it was the longest we had ever lived anywhere, I had my own room and Allan had his, and I had lots of friends in the neighborhood and at school. It was while in this house that my mother's affair finally hit rock bottom and they all had it out and the affair finally ended. Unfortunately, the biggest fight was on Christmas of my sixth grade year. After drinking Christmas eve and Christmas day dad blew up at mom and started throwing things around and ended up badly cutting his hand on a bottle of booze he broke. We ran to the neighbors crying and they took care of the situation. It was after this that things started to calm down and they decided to have more kids and get active in church. I remember hating school vacations because then I had to be at home around my parents. It was at this time that Allan started having behavior troubles at school, too. While at this house my parents had two more boys and decided the house was too small and rather than expand into the basement they decided to build another house in the county. The building was going to take about a year since my dad was going to do a lot of the work himself with his brother-in-law helping. They moved into a temporary house while I was away at girls' camp, to a rental at St. Croix Beach with no hot running water and only a toilet in the bathroom. Nice! They were waiting for me at the neighbor's when I got home and off we went. It was a turning point in my life in many ways - some for good and some not so good. It was a highly emotional move and I was devastated emotionally for many years.

St. Croix Beach. This rental property was a couple blocks from the St. Croix River which separated Minnesota and Wisconsin from one another. It was summer and Allan and I often went down to the beach to swim. Sometimes I took Brian with us as he was now three and taught him to swim underwater that summer. We lived there until the house was finished enough for us to move into in March of my junior year of high school. We now took the school bus to school, first on and last off, in the town of Stillwater. Stillwater was a small town also on the St. Croix River. Our house was in Lake Elmo, but the school was the same at both places we were living so at least I didn't have to change schools again.  At the little house in St. Croix Beach the only running water was in the kitchen and it was only cold. So in the "bathroom" where there was only a toilet, we had a fresh bowl of water a couple times a day on a table to wash our hands in and we took sponge baths in the kitchen. We had to heat water to wash dishes and to bathe. I felt like a pioneer. We had an old fashioned coal stove with an isinglass window on the door to heat the small house. It had only two bedrooms so I had one, the boys had another, and my parents slept on the enclosed porch that had no heat or closet. It was weird to me and I never invited anyone to my house.

When we finally moved to the house in Lake Elmo it wasn't quite finished. We didn't have carpets and Allan's room in the walk out basement wasn't built. But at least we had hot and cold water and a bath and a half. As much as I hated living in the country down a long dirt road away from the highway - it was modern compared with the "shack" we had been living in. It really didn't seem to take long to finish the odds and ends as dad no longer had to travel to work on the house after working all day. It had three bedrooms upstairs and a nice bedroom was built downstairs for Allan. I got my first job while living in this house. It was right on the border of St. Paul so I had a long bus ride from Stillwater after school to St. Paul and then I walked a mile to the store I cashiered three nights a week and Saturdays. My folks would pick me up at night at 9:00 P.M. when the store closed. It seems funny now that everyone managed to get their shopping done without stores being open all night seven days a week. Our house was half way between Stillwater on the east and St. Paul on the west. I lived there and worked at Red Owl Supermarket until I went away to college.

The summer after graduating from high school my mother and I had another of our many huge fights. She expected me to clean and babysit for her when I wasn't at work without checking to see if I had made other plans to spend time with friends. Actually, I wasn't allowed to do anything with friends unless I wasn't needed at home. When I didn't do what she wanted this last time she came to my work and yelled at me while I was working - in front of customers and coworkers - and then didn't come to pick me up that night after work. So at 10 P.M. I called a friend of the family who also worked there and lived close by and went to spend the night at their house. The next day - they drove me to my house while the family was at church and I moved out most of my stuff and spent the summer at their house.

Then it was off to college and I tried a couple summers to spend it at home in Lake Elmo but after two or three miserable summers I quit coming home from college.  My parents moved many more times with my two youngest brothers. I lived with them a couple months in the craft/storage room at another of their homes while I found my own apartment. But I worked two jobs so I wouldn't be around much. Allan left home before graduating to join the Army. He got his GED and never lived at home for long after that.

Maybe next time I will go on to the houses I lived in after marriage and divorce.