07.19.08

5 Places that I have lived

Posted in Meme at 2:06 pm by Meg

This meme comes via Sandra Dodd. I saw it over there ages ago, but then got sidetracked and never did it.

The fine print:

Name 5 places you’ve lived. Be as specific or generic as you like.
List 5 memories associated with each of those places.
Tag 5 others.

I’m not going to tag anyone, but let me know if you decide to do it.

So, I’ve already given out a list of the 26ish places I’ve lived and so now I need to decide on which 5 to focus on.

1. Pioneer Rd. in Mequon, WI when I was 6 years old, for a year.

• Believe it or not, the road’s name is my last memory of knowing the name of something without knowing how to spell it. It wasn’t until we went back there only about a dozen years ago, that I realized that the word was Pioneer.
• I learned to ride at this house. First on an old buckskin gelding named Buckwheat, then on a pony named Star. Star was meant to be mine. We got her/him (don’t remember) at the same time we got another pony that we ended up calling Mini Haha. My brother got Mini (she was only green broke) while I started riding Star. Star was obnoxious and took me under a couple of fences before we got rid of her. Mini stayed with us until she was 20. My brother quickly out grew her and I got her. I rode and drove her for years before moving on to an anglo-arab hunter. We kept Mini around to have a pony for visitors to ride, but finally passed her on to friends. I know she lasted at least another 10 years before I lost track of her.
• The house was down a long dirt driveway and we would catch the school bus at the road. If we weren’t out there waiting, the driver would come down the driveway to get us.
• My dad and sister would go to the livestock auction all the time. One time they came home with a raccoon. I can’t remember his name, but he lived in the barn. To nearly everyone else, he was affectionate and cute. He had something against me, and would chase me up the stall walls and out of the barn. I was happy to see him traded for a dog.
• The house had a lot of stories of missing money from the previous owners (who had died suddenly a number of years before we moved in). One day my brother and father found a hidden room behind a closet under a set of stairs. In the room was a rolling safe - but the door was open and it was empty.

2. Rockwell Rd. in Vestal, NY - We moved in right after I turned 7 and my dad sold it about 12 years ago.

• nope, not named for the artist, but the Rockwells still lived on the road and were old horse trainers. In fact, the story was that they were the inspiration for Walter Farley’s Horse Tamer, they certainly crossed paths, but I’ve never seen any confirmation - what I have seen is that someone farther upstate and possibly a family member was the inspiration.
• I wore flip-flops all summer. My last few years with Mini, I’d go into the barn and slip a bridle on her. Then I’d bring her out and jump on bareback to go riding - either down to the ring or across the street and through the old farmer’s cow pasture (the cows were long gone and he left it open). Since flip-flops fall off, I’d kick them off once I was up and ride barefooted as well.
• Our neighbors had a pond that we went swimming in all the time. It had a mucky bottom and I hated touching it. Because of that, we tended to jump off the dock and then climb back up the ladder to get out. The water was dark and cold - probably why I’m not too keen on putting my head underwater when I swim now. But the funny memory is from my junior year in high school. A couple of friends had to take the regents test for math and were not doing well, so we decided to hang out at the pond and I’d tutor them both. LOL - plans of teenagers. Not a lot of tutoring happened - big surprise? but I must have had some impact - they both got the same score on the test - 67, I think.
• Our house was the old Potts’s farm. Howard Potts was a florist in town and called his place Howard’s. I always got a kick out of the stories of the people that came into his place asking to speak to Mr. Howard, when I knew it was Mr. Potts. Hey, I was probably about 12 at the time.
• The house had an old wooden barn - I’m not sure how old, but the paint job was dated and was as old as I was. In the center, there was a trapdoor leading from the upstairs down to the stalls below. There was another on the side that had a built-in ladder to climb down. My brother used to jump down through the center door all the time, but as the little sister, I was suppose to use the ladder. One day I was up there by myself and decided to try the jump. Twisted my ankle really bad and would have hit my head except that I hit a haybale that had been left on the floor instead. Told my parents that I had misjudged where the door was and fell.

3. These old brick apartments in Providence, RI in 1988-89

• This is the first place Hubby and I shared - need I say more?
• They are right down the street from the state house dome, which was always kind of neat. From the street, they looked very formal brick and while not colonial like some parts of the city, they certainly looked “city.” In the back of the apartments was a tree-lined creek that was often visited by ducks. Each apartment had a huge 12 foot wide picture window/sliding glass door that looked over the creek. I loved that we had a bit of “county” but were so close to the center of Providence.
• Living in Providence, Rhode Island was a trip when it came to going anywhere. For one thing, I worked north of the city in Attleboro, Massachusetts! OTH, we enjoyed going down to Newport. There were two ways to get down there and our preferred choice was to go thru Seekonk, Massachusetts(!). We were down there one evening to see some Shakespeare play - don’t remember which one in particular, but it was put on in one of the old mansions down there - and got caught in a massive snow storm coming home.
• Hubby was mugged while we lived there. It was while Providence was hosting the basketball final fours and he had gone out walking after dark - I had gone to bed, so it was probably fairly late. He says he was doing alright holding off 3 guys, until they pulled out a knife - at which point he gave them his wallet - one I had carved for him, though better that then getting cut for it. He then came home and woke me up saying “I was mugged…” - talk about not the way to wake up - “..and I wanted to let you know in case you wake up when the cops come to take my statement.”
• The year we were there, Hubby bought me this beautiful heavy wool sweater for Christmas. He bought it at the downtown Providence Arcade, one of the oldest shopping centers in the US. It is the warmest sweater I have ever had and I still have it. Whenever I need to dress extra warmly, out it comes.

4. I think N. Towne Ave, in Ponoma, CA in 1989-90 - I’m not positive of the street name.

• Living in LA county was interesting. I worked in a branch office of a moderate sized engineering firm in West Covina. It took me barely 20 mins to drive into the office - but nearly 2 hours to drive home. What really surprised us was the amount of traffic the highways had even on the weekend.
• I didn’t really make friends with anyone in my office - being a woman civil engineer was like that at times - in the office of 30 some people (including the survey crews) there was myself, the receptionist, and a landscape architect. We were friendly, but not really friends. The guys were pleasant and professional, but nothing more. OTH, another guy started work the same time as Hubby and the three of us tended to hang out together. He was from Maryland, so he also didn’t know anyone around LA. The three of us had fun sampling different restaurants and such.
• Boy was born while we were living here. Hubby and I did have some college friends that lived on the other side of the county from us that we connected with a few times. One of the first times was in either September or early October. The four of us went out to a dinner theater and Rose said afterward that she was watching me drink a glass of wine. She told me that I paused before drinking it as if I was considering if I should. I don’t remember, but at that point we had been trying to get pregnant, but didn’t know.
• We lived in an apartment complex and while we moved out there knowing Hubby had a job, it took me a while to find one I liked and settle into it. In the mean time I got to know the couple of woman that worked in the complex office. I think it was while I was working my first job (only stayed a few weeks because the place in W. Covina came along and sounded better) they offered me a job with the apartment management company. Totally out of the blue.
• While everyone thinks of southern California as sunshine and beaches, I worked with people that commuted in from the eastern mountains. Where is often snowed in the winter. I used to get a chuckle out of calling my mil, and telling her it snowed.

5. Stewart Army Subpost outside Newburgh, NY in 1993-94

• Why we were there is a story that’s outside of what I usually talk about on this blog, but we were living in military housing as civilians. We really should have had housing in with the officers who were teaching at West Point (down the road), but between family size and the fact that we weren’t military, they put us in enlisted housing. It made for some really strange conversations when the enlisted wives that were my neighbors, and I got to know, expressed their opinions of the officer wives, some of whom I also interacted with and knew.
• We lived on a loop in townhouses that were constructed 6 or 8 to a building. The center of the loop was an open green area. The base was open, which meant anyone could drive down our road without having to go through a gate, but was patrolled by MPs. (The speed limit was 15 mph, and you did not do 16.) All in all, fairly safe and all that, but not like living on a closed base. I was constantly amazed by my neighbors who would kick their 3, 4, and 5 year old kids out the door in the morning and tell them not to plan on coming back in for a few hours. Needless to say, we had a pack of wandering kids. I remember them plucking flowers out of peoples gardens just for the fun of it.
• It was living here that Girl was born, but it has also been about the only place we’ve ever lived that Boy had the experience of having neighborhood friends. Friends that he could run out the door and go play with x whenever he wanted to. (and no, I didn’t let him range with the pack - he could join them in our yard, but not go off with them.)
• We had moved back to NY from Monterey, CA. Boy was 3 at the time. Back in CA, we had taken Boy to the parks and beach constantly and he was at the age where digging in the sand was fun. The move was paid for by Hubby’s employer and one thing we moved was about 3 cu. ft. of Carmel beach sand (the absolute BEST sand). I remember the truck driver telling me that he would be happy to move as many boxes of sand as I wanted (they are paid by the pound, if you didn’t know). Anyway, in NY putting the sandbox outside (it was early fall when we got into the townhouse) didn’t appeal to me, so I set it up in the basement.
• Living outside Newburgh has been also the only time we have lived “fairly” close to the grandparents (my dad was about 3 hours and Hubby’s folks were another 4 hours beyond him) and we certainly enjoyed it.  OTH, when life took us back to CA after two years, we went willingly.

Wow, talk about memory lane.

Anyway, if anyone decides to give it a try, let me know.

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