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.

The Houses of My Life

As of today I have been in this house for twenty years. Twenty years! That is so awesome and amazing considering the longest I had been in a house in my life, prior to this house, was five and a half years. Once my life was in my hands I put down roots - 20 year roots! But I am ready mentally to move now. It will be at least another year or two before that happens but I am ready to move on.

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.