My Childhood home

Week 5 - My Childhood home

I grew up on a farm in Kyrene, Arizona.  It was a family farm - some of the land was individually owned, and some owned and worked as a family.  Our home was located on the south east corner of 56th street and Ray road (in what is now the city of Tempe) on land my dad owned as an individual.  He bought the property in November 1946 as a single man.  The property was just short of being a quarter section.  There was a canal and a rail road easement on the east side of the property. There was a natural gas easement on the north side of the property. At the corner, there was a small 1 bedroom/ 1 bathroom cottage on the property. When he was still living at home with my grandparents, he rented the house for extra income.

My parents got engaged in February 1948.  Dad and Mom made plans to move into the house straight away, but their plans were foiled when the well went dry. They stayed in the bunk house on the farm until the house was ready.  

The original house, constructed prior to 1946, had one bedroom and one bath (shown in yellow). When the kids started coming, 1 bedroom wasn’t enough; we were quickly outgrowing our home. Around 1950 Mom and Dad added 2 bedrooms onto the south side of the house (shown in orange). My sisters and I shared the large bedroom and the smaller became my brother's bedroom. His room was so small; it didn't even have a closet. According to HGTV, it can't be called a bedroom if it doesn't have a closet. Mom and Dad bought an armoire to hold his clothes. Around 1962 Mom and Dad decided to add on again (shown in green).  Mom and dad got a new bedroom, my oldest sister got her own bedroom and best of all we now had 2 bathrooms in the house to service our family of 6.

 The had a flat roof and after a heavy rain, water would pool on the roof and sometimes leak into the house.  Good think Arizona doesn't get a lot of rain. Sometime after I left home, Dad had a new pitched roof installed on the house.

There was no foundation under the house. The house was on blocks with a dirt crawl space under the house.  One of our dogs had a litter of puppies under the house.  We would crawl through the access panel to play with the puppies. It wasn't long before Mom asked us to bring the puppies out and she and Dad blocked the access. In the picture on the left you can see one of the access points. 

The house was cooled by evaporative cooling.  We had 2 units, 1 cooled the original house, a second one cooled the second addition.  My guess is there might have been a third unit that powered the second addition, but I have no recollection how it was powered.  At the beginning of summer, someone would climb onto the roof and change the pads.  In the picture taken Easter 1961 you can see the ladder to the roof behind me.  

 In the original house the heat was provided by wall heater, the first addition didn't have heat.  In the winter we would get out of our warm beds and run to the wall heater and stand right in front of it.  Once my sister got a bit too close and scorched her pajamas.  

The kitchen was galley style and also served as the utility room.  On one side was the hot water heater, the gas stove, the washing machine and the refrigerator. The sink, workspace, pantry, and cabinets, were on the other side. 

We didn't have a dryer.  My mom would get up almost every morning and run a load and hang it out to dry before getting ready to go to work. Looking back now, I better appreciate all that Mom did to raise a family of 4 children and work full time as a school teacher. In the late 60's or early 70's Dad built a utility room onto the house.  The washing machine was moved from the kitchen to the utility next to the new dryer. I think they also installed a new cabinet in the kitchen so there was more prep room and storage space.

We didn't have a dishwasher.  My Dad always said he had 3 dishwashers.  I usually had the job to drying the dishes.  I was the youngest, the slowest at washing, and I left too many spots behind, so one of my older sisters would usually end up washing the dishes while I dried them.

My favorite room in the house was the new family room.  It had a big picture window that was popular then. On one side of the room there was a fireplace in the middle of the wall flanked by book cases on both sides. The fireplace had a small access to the exterior of the house so you didn't have to haul the ashes out, but could push them out into a bucket waiting on the other side.  The room contained a piano that my grandmother had got for us.  The story is she traded a cow and a calf for the piano.  When we got into high school, my sister Shirley took organ lessons.  My dad told her if she got good enough to play in church, he would buy her an electric organ.  Here is a picture of my sister playing her organ. This room also contained the one and only family TV.  My brother was colored blind; when he adjusted the colors all the rest of us had a good laugh before we quickly changed the settings. As the TV and the piano was both in the same room there were some scheduling and priority issues.

The dining room (which was original living room) contained our only telephone.  We lived out in the country and it was real expensive to have a telephone installed.  When I was a kid, we were on a 10 party line.  Around 1966 we were able to get on a 4 party line.  The phone didn't have a very long cord.  There was very little privacy.  After my oldest sister moved out of the house, I inherited her bedroom which was next to the dining room.  I could just barely get the phone into the bedroom for a little bit a privacy after I started dating.

The original bathroom was way small.  The space was so small, one of the two doors to the bathroom had a notch cut out of it to allow it to clear the commode.  There was no shower, only a tub which was large and spacious. When I was real young, Mom made us take baths one after the other.  You didn't want to be the last one, the water was cold and not to clear sometimes.

Prior to the 1962 addition the house was painted white with green trim.  After we added onto the house it was painted pink.  The back of the house had a cement stoop with 3 or 4 steps.  It was a great place to take pictures.  We have lots of pictures taken from this location. The backdoor was seldom locked, usually only if we were going on vacation.

On the north side of the original house was a screened porch, after we added onto the house we only had an open porch.  When I was small, there was an open ditch on the Ray road side lined by oleanders. Both of my sisters were flower girls at the weddings of my Moms sisters.  We would take their baskets out and pick flowers off the hedges and play at being a "flower girl" tossing the blossoms on the side walks.

Mom and Dad planted lots of trees.  We had lots of citrus trees including a grapefruit, tangerine, lemon, juice orange and sour orange trees.  We had 2 pecan trees, 1 olive tree and a pomegranate tree. We had grape vines, and Dad would sometimes plant a vegetable garden.

When I was a small child we had a chicken coop behind the house. One of our chores was to go collect the eggs.  I was scared of the chickens and being little often had accidents with the eggs.  I remember one day finally getting one into the kitchen without breaking it.  I was so proud of my self until I squeezed it a bit too hard and it cracked and ran all over the kitchen floor.

We also had a storage building behind our house.  One day it was hit by lightening and caught fire. The rural fire department came and put the fire out.  We went to visit my grandparents later that day and when we came home the building was in ashes.  Apparently the fire wasn't all the way out.

In the late sixties there was a trailer behind the house.  My brother moved out into the trailer and I inherited his small room without a closet.  I must have left my clothes in the closet in the room that I had shared with my sister. Sometime after my grandmother died, we inherited her piano.  The old upright went into that bedroom and the newer piano went into the living room.  The nicest thing about having the piano in that bedroom was we no longer had to schedule our piano playing around the TV.

Our nearest neighbors who lived catty corner on Ray was a Mexican family.  They had several houses on the property that lined the north side of Ray road, west of 56 street.  There was a convenience store on the corner.  When I was young it was a 2 story wooden building as shown in the picture on the right.  I remember when it caught fire and burned to the ground.  When they rebuilt the store on the same location it was one story. 

A bit further down their property they ran a bar as well. In summer when the windows were opened, I could hear the music from the bar when I was trying to go to sleep. One night a drunk came into our house by mistake.  Mom struggled to wake Dad so he could make the man leave.  After that the front door was always locked when we went to bed.

I watch HGTV and see young people who want the perfect humongous dream house for their first home. I think they are doing themselves a disservice. The best house doesn't make a loving home.  The best home is where you live and love - I wouldn't trade living in the nicest house for the years I spent fighting my sisters in our shared bedroom.