Many of us are (let’s face it areover the hill) old with many memories. A few have shown a photo of the home they grew up in; but let’s see how many of have a photo back in some album of that home. You can give the address, partial or complete if you want and the years you were there. This was my Family’s home from 1938 to 1963. Dad and mom bought it new. I was born in June of 1944 and we sold it in December of 1963. I have on older brother currently 81 and I’m 80. It’s in North Inglewood California on Stepney Street 2 blocks from Centinella Park. 2 bedrooms, dining room, living room, kitchen, 1 bath with no shower, and a back service porch for laundry. 900 square feet…Yes I still remember the phone number …it started ORchard …. A 40’ by 140’ lot where dad built a 20x25’ back garage you got to by driving thru the front one.
house i was born in up to age 7 was originally a 1 room school house. parents brought it for $12,900 sold it for $21,000 in 1972 and the last time it sold for $150,000 looking almost the same as what my parents had it except they added a detached garage to the property. parents built a new house just 1.5 miles away on 8 acres they brought for $1200 when they sold the school house. grampa thought they were nuts for wanting to live in the country so far from town and to pay that much for land. eventually brought more land up and down that street and in the late 70's the township asked if they could rename the road after our last name seeing we owned most of the properties on that rd. they had to rename the road because there was 4 other roads in the same fire district with the old name. father was happy to allow them to rename it. i brought my house from my sister in 1986 that is just a mile from my parents and my sister built a new house behind me. brother brought the property next to my parents. So basicly the school house i grew up in when i was very small, to the other house i lived in that my parents built when i was younger to the log resort house he built in 2007 after they got rid of us kids to the house i live in now to my sister and brother is less than 2 or 3 miles apart.
I actually live in the house I grew up in. Kinda throws the hipsters off who think they've been in the neighborhood a long time when my answer to their question "how long has your family lived here" is "we bought our house in 1988" lol
The house I grew up in is still standing. It was my grandparent's house that they bought from one of my great uncles in the late 30's. We lived with my grandparents. There was a somewhat ramshackle garage at the back that my dad tore down in the mid 50's. He built a modern 2 car garage in it's place. When I really got into cars, we sawed the back wall out, raised it 1 foot and moved it back 16 feet. That made a great workshop addition. Later when I got into sprint cars, dad built an 8 by 16 room on the side to house my tires and various parts. We lived in Illinois where the winters are cold. Dad got an old gas furnace for the garage before he built on the addition. I could work on stuff all winter. We owned the lot next door and dad always had a large garden. He sold the house after my mother died and moved into a smaller place. My first car in front of the house. The garage you can see is my great uncle's.
Talk about being glad to leave the farm .... when we lived there, none of the trees or other buildings existed, just the house.
My parents bought this place brand new about 1955 for about $10,000. Painted my '40 Ford in this garage with a vacuum cleaner. Spent my high school years here. Valued at $836,000 now. Should have kept it.
The place I was born into, was burnt down from a movie coming making a film. Film was “Nickelodeon” Circa 1978 or so. Had Ryan and Tatum O’Neil as the stars. All prearranged. Was the original house my grandfather bought, when he came across Ellis Island, scooped up he pre arranged wife in Florida. (Old Sicilians). And came to California. I live in the house my folks had moved over from Modesto. In the early 60’s. Wasn’t quite 4 when my dad got it set up. He added a 3.5 car garage, small shop on the end of that later. Turned and expanded the barn into a shop. This all sits on a 55 foot wide lot, about 850 deep. I think one acre. House was built in the 20’s and on McHenry, where it used to be is where what turned into a small mall thing, with Mervin’s the big retail store. I’d take pics, after all it’s on its 2nd repaint. But I have too much clutter right now. Oh, when I got 7/8 years old, my folks split my sister and me up, we’d share a room. My dad turned the pump house into my bedroom. It was known as “the cold room”. When winter hit, he got busy running a gas line, cut in a wall heater, kept me warm. damned fond memories, my youngest sleeps in that room with central heat and air coming out of the floor.
Since this kind of thing is often used for passwords and adult film actor names, I won't share the first house. I did come home from the hospital to an apartment in the Height-Ashbury district, way before the Summer Of Love.
The home where I grew up And the home where I refuse to grow up. And after spending a lifetime playing with cars, this is becoming a reality
Spent my first couple of years on Kirtland Base in a upstairs duplex in base housing...I have no clear recollection of it and my dad said 'even the phone book was classified back then' then to 2726 San Joaquin SE....had to learn that to recite in 1st grade....I don't remember anything else from 1st grade...then to the house that my dad still lives in 67 years later....no car stuff ever happened there as they were strictly point A to point B utility transportation....
I have been living in the same place for 57 years now. Built in 1923, I have been in, under , through, and above every square inch of the place, put up all the sheds, fences, plumbing, wiring, laid concrete and dug the all the dirt. Had about 40 cars over the years and a family here. There is still a bit of concrete that has my initials and a coin stuck in there with the date -1966.
I grew up in this house in Terra Linda, CA (Marin County). Lived there until I was 9 and then moved to Santa Rosa (second pic) until I left for college.
Mom and dad had their first and only house built in 1954, I was five when we moved in with my two older sisters. Mom lived until 1994 and dad passed in ‘98. Dad never drove, we rode public transportation when I was growing up but nevertheless he had a two car garage built for his hot rodder son. Three bedrooms, one bathroom, full basement it was on the typical Chicago lot, 30’ x 125’. That’s my ‘70 Nova parked out front. With winter coming on I insulated the garage and lined it with Masonite. I looked in used furniture shops and found a large, cast iron Seigler oil burner. Kerosene was about 40-45 cents a gallon and having heat got even more economical when a friend gave me a new Seigler carburetor with a thermostat to control it. He worked on the Santa Fe RR and the cabooses were heated with a similar stove. It could be 10* outside, I’d fire that thing up and it would be 70* within an hour.
Our first Long Beach home was a government owned Trailer court housing. We could afford the smallest trailer for our small family. It was about 25 feet long and had a separate bedroom for our mom and dad. My brother and I slept on a kitchen table, dropped down to make a bed. We were 2 and 4 years old, so we fit perfectly in the drop-down table with the seat cushions as the mattress. There were rows of small trailers and then, larger ones as the whole city blocks square area spread out. Hello, It is not a sob story, but most of us older guys started with what ever our parents could afford at the time. a 6 years old 1941 used Buick was all our dad could afford, so that was how we arrived in Long Beach near the L.A. River and PCH. But, staying there until 1948 was as good as any other place for us. An elementary school for my brother near by, a grocery store just a short walk away and a nice café with the best homemade ice cream and Root Beer floats, ever, just across the street. 50+ years later it was also down the street from Jesse James’ Westcoast garage and workplace. Then, in 1948, our dad saved enough for a down payment on a "real" house. It was a Craftsman styled house with a large yard. an actual yard. It had wood siding all around and not made of metal. By the time our dad had saved enough money, we moved. The real house was on the farthest border of Long Beach next to the Terminal Island Freeway and later on, Lion’s Dragstrip exit street. It was a small home with a huge fenced in yard and garage. But, it was a real home, not a trailer. The play area extended beyond our yard all the way to the freeway proper. (the old house is now gone and the address is of the newest elementary school in the local Long Beach school district) Our mom actually pushed the trigger device on the large camera set up, but did not hold up the camera. It was on an old tripod as the camera was too heavy. Jnaki If I recall, many years later our mom told us that Craftsman house was around $8k in price. Our last house started in 1953 when, again, someone offered a good price for the old Craftsman house and the new house was a block away from our elementary school. The cost for the new house I saw on an old paper I found in our old desk years later. It was $15k for 30 years. So, when I found it when our toddler son was 7, it was paid off and our mom lasted until 1998 mortgage free. The house was still small, two 8 foot square, if that, bedrooms and a pink tiled puny bathroom that two people could not stand in together. a large yard that went deep as the whole neighborhood was one of the first "tracts" built and every 4th house was the same. But, each house could have a single car main garage or a two car main garage. But, it was larger than the old Craftsman home, so it felt huge… we stayed there through our teenage days and our mom left there in 1998. 1955-56 A 51 Oldsmobile in the garage and right in front of the garage opening was a grassy yard that led to the backyard building that we converted to a small hot rod/drag race garage workspace as teens. Yes, we had to destroy our mom’s garden of roses and other plants as we created a pathway to the rear garage converted from a recreation room with a door and all windows to one with a large garage door opening. 1958 as the little shiny dots show that my brother’s 58 Impala was sitting, wedged into his far left garage space, while our dad’s big Buick takes up “his” space. For all of the cars we owned, the corner of the narrow passage was never hit or damaged, even when our mom learned to drive ! ha! A very narrow opening, but the 348 rumble always sounded pretty good. We just could not sneak in our Impala, or out, without our mom knowing what time it was. Awwww! We both increased our parking ability with the narrow two car garage. But in order to get our cars into the backyard newly remodeled hot rod garage, we had to go back and forth to create a path for the cars to roll back to the working space in front of the building on concrete. It was a workplace set up for engine building, hot rod parts gathering and plenty of wall shelves + storage for our builds. Our 1940 Willys Coupe could roll in place, but sideways, so we could close the door and lock it up. It was difficult to work on the Willys Coupe inside, so we always rolled it outside on the concrete landing and on hot days, a large canvas tarp made plenty of good shade for us. It was the same set up on those So Cal rainy days when we still had to work in the workshop for various things. Later on, with the backyard garaged cleaned out, a couple of desert racing motorcycles and various parts were present. Then a couple of longboards and supplies for creating new ones + repairing old dings. Finally, in 1998, we sold the house and moved out of Long Beach. The only thing we accidently left was a set of two dual pipe, chromed scavenger pipes we had stored in the rafters of the backyard garage. When our real estate agent called, to tell us, we just told him to give them to the new owners. I told him they were historic and valuable. Ha! The old house and neighborhood is still standing, today. The housing prices are out of control with prices in the neighborhood at $500-700K for these tiny 1940s houses. They were nice inexpensive houses that allowed us to grow up, have fun at the nearby Lion's Dragstrip starting in 1957 and in 1960 we started our different paths to today. As the old saying goes, "It was a nice place to grow up, but I would not want to live there, today." YRMV
My Mom still lives in the only house they ever bought, a small two bedroom, single bath 6 room house. I think they gave something like $3500 for it and three acres of land in 1958. Wife and I live in her childhood home, we took it over in 1978. Her folks moved in with her Grandmother when her Grandfather died. This house was originally moved in here in the mid 60’s, and has been remodeled a couple of times. I’ve spent countless dollars having it bricked, new windows, new doors, central AC unit, new plumbing, etc. I’ve opened up new yard, cut brush and bramble, drug and pushed and hauled dirt to get it into the shape it’s in today. Sorry, no pics. My last computer destroyed an external hard drive I was using as back up as well as its internal drive. Lost years of pics. Seldom bother taking any now.
I grew up on the west side of Chicago in a town called Maywood. The house I grew up in was built in 1888, and my parents bought it in around 1957 as I remember. We moved out in 1979, and moved up towards the Wisconsin/Illinois border, closer to my father’s job. The people we sold the house to got foreclosed on, and it got bought and converted into a “halfway” house for people leaving treatment for Alcohol and drug addiction. I got to go through it a few years ago, and a lot of the interior is exactly the way it was when my parents “remodeled” it back in the 60’s. Neat to actually be able to go through a home you lived at, even though it’s long been out of the family. Picture is of one of my sisters and I in front of the house, after my brothers funeral. I live 3 hours from there now.
I was born only a week before we moved into our new home. I lived there until I got married, at age of 21. My Dad still lives there at 93. Photo is of my brother, Dad, and me . Second photo is of my mother.
My dad and the other members of the build co-op got our house ready for move-in in March of 1958. I moved in 2 months later. Never moved out, bought the house from my parents when I got married. My wife and I still live in it today, 66 years later. Still have the original phone number. Picture is of me at the age of 2 in front of the house, other is my coupe with my youngest son in the passenger seat on Christmas day, a couple of years ago. Rare occurrence in our parts to not have snow at Christmas. We took the car up to the nursing home to visit my mom; that was her last Christmas. It was neat to have car out, snow usually will be a few feet deep by this time.
I was a WW2 baby,9/42,we moved a lot,Dad was Navy, worked on Navy ships in Miami. Got asigned to Bell to work on XP77,moved to NY for that. Was near were he grew up in mid state NY. Then after war,back to Miami. But back n forth to NY every summer to work with his Dad n Brothers. My Dad an his Dad ,2 Brothers, Barlow n Son Cont. ,built homes, mostly a full block at a time,after WW2. Tell 54,we lived in a trailer an some rented places,an 2 homes in central NY. In 53 Dad built a house to sell,in Miami= It didn't sell,so we lived in it,from 1954 to 1970 when Dad sold it. I left home in early 65. That house,that I helped build some, as a kid, is were I call" Were I grew up". Built my first hot rod n custom at. It has a lot good things in my head about that place. But now its only a open grass lot ,after someone bull dozed it a few years ago. Pic is in carport ,late 1961,doing a little extra work,intake an heads off,Olds Rocket 88 engine in my full custom "J". Dad just watching. "You can't go home again"
My family moved to Ft Lauderdale in 71’. Moved from a big house in Ky. that they’d built four years earlier. They intended to build a new house but hadn’t found a lot they liked, so they bought this totally trashed little house in a great neighborhood. Intent was to fix it up, live in it while they built a new house, and flip it. You know how the best laid plans go - we lived there 15 years. My parents moved in 86’ and sold it to me. Dad paid 26k in 71’. He sold it to me for 115k. I had a job move 1.5 years later and sold it for 135k. Thought I’d made a home run. House changed hands two years ago for 985k. Sure wish I’d stayed there!
The Jalopy Journal
