I lived with my divorced mother in a second floor studio apartment in Oakland, California. Mom commuted every morning to San Francisco where she worked as a cook at the terminal and return home at 5 PM. I would ride my bicycle to school after she left for work in the morning. Despite the small apartment the kitchen was large enough for mom to prepare wonderful meals for us. I always had some kind of after school and Saturday job to help out financially. I can remember my mother counting her tips when she sometimes worked as a waitress instead of a cook. I became a fairly generous Tipper as an adult because of this. I worked at a Launderette, Payless Super Market, Oakland Tribune Circulation, Piedmont Theatre. Seems so strange that where I now live is about the same size as the Oakland apartment.
I spent those years at 215 Pine Street in Wichita Falls, Texas, living with my mother and dad and three brothers in a three room tar paper shack. We moved there from our home on River Road which was up from where Holiday Creek merged with the big Wichita Ricer and where our house flooded each spring, sometimes several times. It was at 215 Pine Street that I dug the cellar and my mama’s cousin, George Brown, helped me build the storm cellar. which became my room until I joined the army when I turned seventeen. It was later declared to be in a flood zone and all the houses and structures were bulldozed in, including my cellar, and the whole area turned back into a natural flood plain. That was the end of 215 Pine Street and my home on River Road.
We lived in a rental house, next to a flooring mill (see the lumber piles all around us), seven of us in a small house with an outhouse, no car, walked everywhere, used a tub and washing board, then hung clothes on a line in back yard. We were poor, but happy. That's me with my beloved dog, called Junior.
Oh I remember it well. 831 Dow Street located in the area known as and called 'Lower Dayton View.' Two story, two bedroom house the first and only house that Mom rented. We had moved there after my eight grade year was over and I had decided the I wanted to go to the high school in our old neighborhood so I rode public transportation to school walked up a giant hill to get there.Yeah, even in bad weather. When the weather was nice I enjoyed walking home. Met my first 'crush' doing that . Lots of memories then and now I realize that our home has many characteristics of that house especially the big tree in the backyard, a breakfast nook, nice size front and back yards and near a bus stop to name a few. My mother use to work for the company Standard Register and while working there she set up a typewriter to practice typing and landed a position as a civil service employee for DESC, Defense Electronics Supply Center aka Gentile Air Force Station located in a suburb of Dayton. I didn't know it then but watching her had a strong influence in the direction I would take entering the workforce and my interest in crafts and what is now donned DIY. Oh the memories are pouring in....hmmm.
Medium size Duroc hog farm in northeastern Indiana. Besides hogs, had field corn as a crop to feed our hogs. Junior High and high school was all about farming. Lived far enough away from school, that I had to take a bus to school and home.
We had some of those 'conviences' too. But we were not poor but my mother who hated growing up in the city bought an old farm house in the country.Plus grandady gve her an apartment in the city so we had best of both worlds. My mom thought she was Anne oakly calamity Jane She had a pearl handle 38 and knew how to use it,shot theh ead off many snakes in the water and on land. We had an outhouse and a large 10 acre lake 45' deep in the midle and took many spillway bathes and spring fed creek bathes too.I also used a wash board but mostly wringer washer. A great life. Except for hawling water from well in buckets if you spilled any you were awarded stripes by switch.