Sharing Memories: My First Home

Sharing Memories: My First Home

I remember my first home fondly.  Actually, it was technically my second home.  My parents purchased the house on nine acres before I was born, but it needed a lot of work.   So, I was told we continued to live in a house on 35th St in San Diego for six weeks after I was born.

This is the view from the Hwy 80 side.  I believe that the Interstate 8 Westbound Lane probably goes straight through this house location.  I remember this front porch as being solid concrete.  This photo looks like wood - so that must have been part of the renovations.  My parent's bedroom and the bathroom were, in the end, facing us.  My bedroom was next to it, and I had to go through their room to the bathroom.  There are two doors onto the porch - one behind the tree opened into the living room, and the one behind the first porch support opened into my parent's bedroom.

This view is looking east.  The living room was a large room in the front part of the house.  I don't remember a porch on this side of the house.  It was all enclosed, and the kitchen was in the back, adjoining the living room.  I do remember the front being elevated like that, and that area was enclosed and used for storage.

This view looks southwest towards the back of the house.  That looks like a wood stove exhaust pipe, but I don't remember a wood stove.  I believe a cement slab was added along the left portion of the building and it was screened in.  There was a door from the kitchen (about where the window was) which entered the screened porch.  There was a hillside not too far back.  They built a lath house most of the length of the left side of the house.  Had a fish pond at the east end of the lath house.   Off to the right and back a couple of 100 ft, we had a chicken house.

This is the way I remember our home.  I would guess this was taken about 1947.  You can see our water tank up the hill directly behind the right side of the home.  The small building to the right was my Brother's Bedroom.  No bathroom.  John was 13 years older than me, and he joined the Navy at 18 years old, so he was gone from home by the time I was six years old.

This is a shot of a Google earth map of where our home was.  The blue line is supposed to represent our property line but is probably way off.  The cut-out in the bottom left was a one-acre parcel we didn't own.  So... it was probably smaller, and the whole thing may not have been quite that wide.   We owned 9 acres, and it really did look like an upside-down Utah.

Found another picture of a home I lived in, but that will be for another day.