Describe your childhood home. Pretend you are walking in the front door and describe it in as much detail as possible. Did you have a favorite room? What kind of furniture did you have? Was there something special about your house? Did you live in a lot of different houses or towns?
Answer:
This is a fairly easy one for me since my father still lives in the house I grew up in. So for privacy concerns, I'll describe a few other homes I've lived in as a child.
The Apartments in Salt Lake City, Utah
At one point my mother and step-father owned and lived in a set of apartments in Salt Lake. I don't remember how many there were, jut that they had white exterior walls and the one we lived in faced the main road. I also remember cutting the grass with small hand-held trimmers where the grass met the sidewalk or driveway. There was also a tree out front that had fascinating roots. I don't recall much about the interior, but there was a trailer parked out back and a feral cat had kittens under it. And one of our neighbors had a very large neck, I think due to a tumor of some sort. I think his funeral was the first I attended.
The Fifth-Wheel in Madera, California
I remember being slightly older than I was in Utah and my mother and step-father were living in a fifth-wheel while she worked at the local hospital. I remember Madera was awfully hot, which meant I didn't play outside much. The trailer park had a pool but I don't think I was allowed to swim there alone. But I do remember swimming there once shortly after eating and getting sick on the side of the pool. I had french fries.
Being a trailer park there was the stereo-typical group of kids that lived there and were often up to no good. Seeing as I had no friends since I was only there in the summer (I usually spent my summers with my mother and the rest of the year with my father), I did my best to be friends with this group of small time hoodlums. I never remember doing anything terribly bod or even mildly bad, but the leader of the group had a deformed foot and when he pedaled his bike, his one foot was always sideways on the pedal.
I also remember seeing a group of European (German I think) travellers come through on a giant tour bus (there may have been two buses). They had cool stuff that slid out of the bottom of the bus (like a grill) and it was neat to watch them and listen to them talk.
Photos:
References:
- Numerous facts were gathered from the private Richard Family Estate collection. These facts span numerous sources of information and contain genealogical data, photos, and newspaper articles.
2 comments:
This is a good question for genealogists. I've done a 'floor plan' description of the childhood home that I remember best. And I've written out the bits and pieces I remember about the house we lived in when I was really little. Why didn't I ask Mum all about it? Missed a good opportunity there, I'm afraid.
It is a very good question, especially since it's one of those details about your childhood that you often don't think about since it's there every day. And unless your house had something interesting about it, it probably didn't come up in a conversation. I can remember my dad telling me several times about the house he grew up in and how it was really two houses that were put together.
Fortunately for me, my childhood home is still intact (in fact, my father still lives there). But there are times I wish I had enough money to buy some of the houses I used to live in or visit just because there were such a part of my life growing up. Like my grandmother's house in Nebraska or my aunt's house in Chicago. Both have vivid memories for me but are no longer in the family.
Post a Comment