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We moved so often, there isn't any one place I can call my "childhood home." The longest I ever lived at any one address was five years. So my answer is:
Most were stucco one-story flat-roof buildings. Most had a front and back lawn planted with grass and maybe a concrete patio in the back, but not much else in the way of landscaping.
A 1953 new subdivision tract house of about 900 sq. ft. with a full basement and a large back yard. I shared one of the two bedrooms with my brother. My parents intentionally bought the end house of the subdivision because it had the biggest yard. We had a lot of trees including 2 oaks, a box elder, an elm, a weeping willow, and two mulberry trees. We had a menagerie of various pets including a collie dog names Lassie. The yard bordered on some woods, past that was a large fallow cornfield. Behind the cornfield was a creek and a second woods. We had a version of the Garden of Eden back there and the local kids built treehouses and "hideouts".
Before that, until I was 5, we lived in my grandma's house in the city in the old family house from around 1900. I have good memories of both places.
A typical mid-century housing project. Maybe there were a few trees, some shrubs, and a patch of grass. There was a park across the street, which was all concrete. Then we moved literally across the street from the beach. The Atlantic Ocean was my childhood garden.
I loved our little backyard. It had honeysuckle growing on the fence and lots of roses...my Mom loved roses and grew huge "Peace Roses." They were beautiful. Our yard smelled wonderful. There was also a mulberry tree with luscious big purple berries. I'd fight the birds for them.
Our house? Nothing special. Small. Three bedrooms, one bath for a family of five. Probably around 1100 sf, if that. Built post war in the late 1940s...lots and lots of kids in the neighborhood. The first of the post-war baby boomers...
I had several homes - we moved a lot. All were small rental houses. Several in FL, and then in NC and MD. No railroad tracks nearby though - my parents could not have stood that LOL. No gardens - parents were too busy working and taking care of us kids. We were far from "well off".
A small three bedroom, one bathroom house in a village of 2,000 that started off as a log cabin my dad built himself. A few years after I came along, he surfaced the front and one side of the house with crystalline limestone rocks that he quarried somewhere nearby. Some had fossils embedded in them, and a lot of them had crystals inside. The other sides of the house he surfaced with plain white stone. It was cramped quarters for four kids and two parents, but we were always warm and dry. And everyone in town knew just where I lived when I said, "I live in the house with the rocks all over it."
We had a medium sized front and back yard, and a garden in back that was huge. My mom and dad were both avid gardeners. We had strawberries, raspberries, cabbage, lettuce, cucumbers, and squash. Also a lot of flowers, rosebushes and zinnias, peonies, and a lot more.
i love this !!! it sounds absolutely magical. reading this and seeing it made my day, so thank you
When I was two (we had lived with my grandparents up until then), my parents built a little house, mostly by themselves. We lived there until the 4th child was born and then moved to what I thought was a 2-story mansion. It wasn't....it was old and pretty small and only had one bathroom but we thought we had MOVED UP! My dad made some great improvements and my mother decorated it beautifully. Over the years, two more children were added to the family and we were pretty stuffed in there, but it worked.
There was an extra lot in the back that my parents turned into a garden where they grew tomatoes, corn and green beans. We had a walnut tree and an apple tree for climbing. There was a detached 2-car garage.
Has anyone else used Google street view/earth satellite to look at their childhood home? (if it still exists)
Gated community, so there's no street view for mine, but the satellite view is somewhat shocking. The huge tree growth that's occurred over 35 years, in what used to be scrubby desert, is amazing to see. The explosion of roads and housing covering every square foot of what used to be acres and acres of open land, not so amazing. It looks so...crowded. As kids, we used to roam and explore those fields on foot or bicycle, hunt for rocks and lizards, get into fights, set up wilderness forts, etc. Having open and free range space was fun and healthy, but it's gone now.
I did look at it some 50 years later. It is now a two unit condo with the side yards paved for parking vehicles.
Old cape cod style house in a blue-collar neighborhood of a medium-sized city. One bathroom for the five of us and three bedrooms. It had a pretty little yard with a big silver maple tree and the huge cherry tree hung over from the neighbor's yard. Fantastic cherries!
There were beautiful daffodils and tulips every year; iris, too. And a big, beautiful row of all kinds of roses. The flowers were planted by the previous owner but my mom tried to keep it all up. She planted nasturtiums in honor of my grandfather who loved them, she said. There was a coal shoot that lead into the basement. I used it as a slide.
It was a one-way street.
Lots of kids and we all played on the street. Sadly the house is long gone.
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