Speaking of Mamma, this past week Barb had the notion to Google all of the addresses of houses we have lived in. Google Street View, and sites like Zillow provide a virtual time machine. You (sometimes) can go home again.
The summer Barb and I got married, I was temporarily working in Dallas. We rented an apartment in a complex on Mt. Rainer Street near (but not in) the posh River Oaks section, in southwest Dallas. The complex (and River Oaks) has aged a bit, but so have we. That's our first-ever home right there in the front. Apartment 101.
Before school started, my company moved us back to Abilene ahead of schedule and housed us in a motel for a couple of weeks while we waited for an apartment behind J. W. and Delno Roberts house to become available. The motel hardly counts, and the apartment, just off the campus, is now a parking lot - so no pictures - but it was our first official residence in Abilene. Our neighbors were former roommate and future brother-in-law Thayne Cuevas and almost Cuevas family member Ronny Feike.
After my graduation, we moved away from the campus to a furnished duplex on High Street. Our landlords were a couple from Highland who had several rental properties. Our neighbors were Barb's cousin Nell and new husband Dalton Ford.
My boss told us about a house across the street from him in the north-western section of town that was available and priced to sell quickly. The owner was the former football coach for Hardin-Simmons University. He was former, because H-SU had folded the football program, thus the need for a quick sale. We bought the house for $9,000, which included major appliances and an extra-long couch with re-enforced springs. The coach was a BIG man.
Interestingly, the Google Street View currently shows an empty lot to the north of that house. My recollection was there was an adjacent house - but it was on the corner. This is the house we lived in when our children were born.
Perhaps the most frightening day of my life was the day we came to Austin to house-hunt and found out what it was going to cost to live in this town. A realtor we worked with spelled it out rather plainly and parked us in a small unfurnished rental house on Kamar Drive, off Highway 183 in what was then north Austin. The best thing I can say about that house was that there was a huge open space behind it that was a great place for flying kites. That space is now Charles Maund Toyota.
Shortly after we moved in, the owner informed us that he was putting the house up for sale. We were not interested and we soon had to deal with realtors bringing people by to see the house. We got in a bit of revenge, however. One potential buyer was examining the in-wall panel heater and asked if it kept the house warm. Sweet little Rob spoke up and said, "No. It gets really, really cold in my room." Yesss!!
When Barb looked this house up, she saw that it was on the market again. There were pictures and descriptions of recent remodeling (with central heat and A/C now) and a property value of a third of a million dollars!
We went looking for a place not for sale, and moved to a very nice duplex on Dryfield, on the eastern side of 183. It had a fireplace, tile floors, and older neighbors who were never home. The couple in "A" traveled. A lot. As I recall he was a sales rep in the jewelry business, always on the road, and she went with him.
Glen Neans was a local home-builder who attended Brentwood, and he assured us that he could get us into a home of our own - and he did, though his Superintendent stopped returning our calls at some point in the process. And in March of 1973 we moved into our 2nd, and probably final, house. It cost us 3 times the one we bought from the Hardin-Simmons coach, and it was at least 3 times scarier to sign those papers, but we're still here, so I guess it worked out well. And yes, we have grass and shrubs and trees and such now.
And here's a challenge. Can you locate all of your residences?
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