In the last post I told you how Grandpa owned the Sunoco gas station. He actually ran it for fifty years. In the middle of the passage about the business, Connie mentioned the following:
They [Adrian and Edna] built a new house (Adrian can still recite all the specs and dimensions for that house) and their son was born in 1936. They had two daughters, one 2 and one 7 years later.
I’d like to clarify what Connie wrote there. Grandma and Grandpa got married in 1932, then built their new house in 1934, the same year their first child, my mother was born. Two years later, her brother was born, and in 1940, her sister was born.
Mom and Uncle Don
According to Google maps, the house Grandpa built is still there. Here is a photo of it from 1947:
Grandma and Grandpa’s house on Burdick Street
Eventually ivy grew up the chimney side of the house.
This is the house where my mom and her siblings grew up. It’s where we went for Christmas and Thanksgiving. It’s where I stayed every weekday in kindergarten while Grandma babysat me.
When you walked in that front door, their living room was to the left and the kitchen to the right. Straight ahead took you to the two back bedrooms. Upstairs there were three bedrooms. The window over the front porch was the tiny room in front. In there they kept an iron crib and I found my uncle’s books. The bedroom on the side by the chimney was the big bedroom. In there I found the chest with my mother’s treasures and the little corner shelf. The mirrored shadowbox hung on the wall with the miniatures displayed on the shelves. I slept in the bedroom which was really a hallway, tucked under the eaves, but right by the stairway and therefore closest to the only bathroom, which was around the corner from the bottom of the stairs.
This house is also where I read the books of my mother and uncle and aunt (Zane Gray, the Bobbsey Twins, Black Beauty, all the Louisa May Alcott books) and played with their toys, such as my mom’s miniature collection. I pored over all the scrapbooks my mother had made out of newspaper and popular magazine clippings. Scrapbooks about grooming and beauty, Frank Sinatra, Shirley Temple. I studied the photo albums, especially the pictures of my mom with her light brown braids pinned up on top of her head.
Eventually my grandparents sold the house and bought one in Portage, the suburb their kids lived in. Though the house left the family, I doubt the house ever really left any of us.
I hope you’ll stay tuned for Part IX of Grandpa’s story . . . .
Here are the first parts of the story:
Click this link for Part I
Click this link for Part II
Click this link for Part III
Click this link for Part IV
Click this link for Part V
Click this link for Part VI
Click this link for Part VII
The Family Kalamazoo 
I love this post most! The pictures of your mother and uncle and the house are truly wonderful, and I love that you remember the house so well. The last line was perfect – the house never really left you. So glad you have these memories.
Sheila, weren’t they little cuties, though? I am glad, too, about the memories! Thanks for reading.
It’s fun to read your description of the house. I realize now that I don’t have any pictures of many of the rooms in various homes that I’ve lived in over the years–and that I should be trying to create word pictures that describe them.
Sheryl, isn’t it true though that we don’t think about taking pix of something as mundane as the rooms we live in, but then it starts to fade and we realize we don’t have them “saved” in photographs. Yes, definitely, start to write down the descriptions.
I think all of us have memories of the houses that we have lived in. Especially if they are no longer standing. A couple of my childhood houses are no longer there, but they live on in my memories.
Have you written about them?
I’m sure memories of your reading time remain to this day. Were you able to keep your Mom’s albums? They would be a wonderful link to the days and times of her youth.
I don’t have my mother’s albums. I would LOVE them, but I’m pretty sure she threw them out.
Such detailed accounts of your family are so great to have.
Oh… some of the homes of our childhood where we had lots of happy memories are just llike that eh?… Delightful read… many thanks 🙂
Thank you so much for reading the series, Catherine. I’m glad you enjoy it!