My childhood home

My childhood home
I never lived in a single family home until after I was married. My Dad owned our home but it was a two flat or three flat. With the income from the other apartments it was easier to pay the mortgage, maybe we even lived technically rent free. Saving a dollar was always a priority for my Dad, probably from living through the Great Depression.

My parents bought our first home when I was 1 year old.  It was a wood frame two flat with asphalt shingles in a working class, north side, Chicago neighborhood. We lived in the second floor apartment. It was small. There was a living and dining room combination with a small kitchen separated from the living area by a peninsula we used as a kitchen table. There was one bathroom and only one bedroom. After my sister was born my Dad renovated the attic into two bedrooms. You went up these very steep stairs to reach the first bedroom and then you had to go through the first bedroom (my parents room) to get to the front bedroom (my and my sister's room). The bedrooms were so small an adult could only stand up in the middle of the room as both side walls sloped inward at the angle of our steep  roof. It could be cold in the winter but we had down comforters my grandma had brought us from Norway. We had a space heater in the living room that gave some heat from a hole my Dad had cut in the ceiling of the living room/floor of the bedrooms. He liked to turn the heater off though at night to "save money". That was okay but in the summer? Whew, it was hot and I mean hot. I don't think anyone had air conditioning then. Only bowling alleys and movie theaters were "air-cooled" and as fundamentalist Christians we never were allowed to go to any of those "sinful places". On steamy Chicago summer nights we would drag our mattress into the front room and leave the front and back doors open. Dad would put a fan in one door blowing in and another sucking the hot air out of the tiny apartment. Mom always warned us "don't let the fan blow directly on you or you will wake up paralyzed" and Dad insisted "if you put your finger in the fan it will serve you right if it cuts off your fingertip, that's what happened to Cousin Arthur you know." I was always real careful about my fingers but it was often so hot I tried to get as close to the fan as I could. It was totally worth the risk of paralysis.

 1953 Chicago - Grandpa & Grandma, Mom and Me

We had a washing machine on our back porch but no dryer. My Mom hung the laundry on a pulley line that went from our porch to the top of the garage in back. Boy, those sheets and towels did smell good. Our front stairs went directly to the second floor. I remember them well because of my grandfather. He would whistle from the outside when he arrived and I would run to the front door. He would do a little fancy tap dance up the stairs and when he reached the top I would get a kiss and a piece of candy he had hidden in his pocket. We moved to the suburbs when I was entering the fifth grade. We moved to a nicer apartment building which my Dad bought in a nicer area but I always felt that little house on Monticello ave was my real home. Life was good then. Mom and Dad were young, happy, healthy.....and Grandpa could dance.