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I was talking to my sister yesterday and she visited a realtor website that had a tour of the street we lived on in Sacramento, California from 1959 to 1966. I literally hadn't seen my house since 1966. I had no idea it was that SMALL. My memory was running around in a HUGE yard and my neighbors had a vast garden full of different fruit trees. Both yards are in reality not much bigger than a postage stamp. The houses there are priced in the mid $100,000 range, very cheap for California. The housing prices there have been falling drastically. Most of the houses were built in 1955. The neighborhood must be going downhill I suppose. Then I visited a website that showed the street I lived on in Needham, Massachusetts from 1966 to 1971. Completely opposite story. I lived on a small dead end street that had small 3 bedroom houses, probably built in the 1950's. The entire street was levelled and the modest homes there have been replaced by 5 bedroom 3 bath HUGE houses ranging from 1.5 to 1.9 MILLION dollars. Visiting both websites I get a picture of my father a young, hard working man cutting the grass, shoveling the snow, and my mother cleaning and cooking, my brother (RIP) working on his art, my sisters friends coming over (her best friend recently died), all my friends, and I thought to myself I can never live like that again. It was a different time and place. Most mothers were home with their kids. Kids could walk to school in safety. I imagine my dad was paying $100 to $200 a month rent and thinking that was outrageous. There was no global warming, no internet, no cell phones, no CD's, kids were all over the place playing outside, Halloween was a madhouse of kids trick or treating, Christmas wasn't a bad word, life was pretty good. I wonder if we can ever get it back...

fisherman bob wrote:I was talking to my sister yesterday and she visited a realtor website that had a tour of the street we lived on in Sacramento, California from 1959 to 1966. I literally hadn't seen my house since 1966. I had no idea it was that SMALL. My memory was running around in a HUGE yard and my neighbors had a vast garden full of different fruit trees. Both yards are in reality not much bigger than a postage stamp. The houses there are priced in the mid $100,000 range, very cheap for California. The housing prices there have been falling drastically. Most of the houses were built in 1955. The neighborhood must be going downhill I suppose. Then I visited a website that showed the street I lived on in Needham, Massachusetts from 1966 to 1971. Completely opposite story. I lived on a small dead end street that had small 3 bedroom houses, probably built in the 1950's. The entire street was levelled and the modest homes there have been replaced by 5 bedroom 3 bath HUGE houses ranging from 1.5 to 1.9 MILLION dollars. Visiting both websites I get a picture of my father a young, hard working man cutting the grass, shoveling the snow, and my mother cleaning and cooking, my brother (RIP) working on his art, my sisters friends coming over (her best friend recently died), all my friends, and I thought to myself I can never live like that again. It was a different time and place. Most mothers were home with their kids. Kids could walk to school in safety. I imagine my dad was paying $100 to $200 a month rent and thinking that was outrageous. There was no global warming, no internet, no cell phones, no CD's, kids were all over the place playing outside, Halloween was a madhouse of kids trick or treating, Christmas wasn't a bad word, life was pretty good. I wonder if we can ever get it back...

I went back to my childhood homes awhile back. The apartment by Tiger Stadium was demolished. TIGER STADIUM is demolished too! The house we had in Detroit during the 70's had been repainted a hideous combination of orange, green, blue and yellow. It looked like a clown exploded on the house! It was demolished a few years later. We couldn't walk to school in safety, but did it anyway. Found used heroine needles and condoms along the way pretty frequently. Music was on LP, 8-track, or cassette. Halloween was risky. If some kid didn't get kidnapped or killed by a pederast they were poisoned by the candy or bit into an apple concealing a razor blade. The candy was treated like radioactive waste until it was inspected by parents for signs of tampering. AIDS was new. Crack was new. Terrorists were new. Hostages cost Carter the election and we got dickheads Reagan / Bush for the next twelve years. Gas was in short supply, with lines everywhere. Nuclear power plants like 3 mile island were a disaster. People were still pissed about Nixon getting pardoned. Some product or another was always defective or dangerous; aspirin tampering, Ford Pintos, red M&M's, etc. Disco and polyester was everywhere. But, Saturday Night Live was still funny. Christmas whored Santa out like a pimp, commercialism rampant. Star Wars and John Travolta were HUGE. Saturday morning cartoons were still on Saturday morning. Jack T. Chick comics from church traumatized us. Scary movies about going to Hell, from church, traumatized us. CHURCH traumatized us. Got beat up a lot. House caught fire once. Nearly died a few times. The city never recovered from the riots. It just kept going deeper in the shitter. One of my redneck relatives called me a "nigger-lover". f**k childhood. I don't get nostalgic about it.

We made a trip back to Portland some years after our family had moved from there. The house, as you alluded too, had shrunk somewhat LOL
The thing that struck me though was I had an opportunity to stroll down to the waterfront / beach where I used to play. At the time ( around 65 ) it was wide open, no homes or fences for miles and miles along the coast, and the same for several city blocks inland.
I was unable to reach the beach or the waterfront without trespassing manicured yards.
A Horned Toad, one of the last I've seen in my life time, was running along the sidewalk. Remembering how I used to catch and play with them I walked towards him and he attacked and bit my boot !
I had never seen them aggressive in years of catching them playing with them and releasing them back on the beach.
Was a sad ride home for me that day.
You cannot go back.

I can see why you're what you are today Mike. It's a shame you had to experience all that negativity. My life wasn't all peaches and cream. I had a mix of both. My neighbors in Sacramento were four hoodlum brothers, all older than me. They threatened to beat me up if I didn't get money for cigarettes or steal cookies from my house for them. Numerous times the police were there and one time chased one of the boys through our yard and arrested him. The last time any of them threatened me I kicked one in the balls real hard. I also punched one hard in the nose. Bleeding all over the place. Funny, none of them ever bothered me again. Even kids much older and bigger than me steered clear. My father never taught me how to fight, I just did it naturally. I was all of seven years old and NOBODY ever bothered me after that. It has to be hell for a little kid to fear everybody around him. Thankfully my son who doesn't have a whole lot going for him except his size and strength never had to worry about anybody picking on him. I had a much older brother who went to Nam and never recovered from the psychological hell. He died many years ago in a nursing home at the ripe old age of 45. I went through many, many episodes of hell with him and saw it destroy my parents as well. We lived in lower to middle income neighborhoods. A lot of my friends had troubles with drugs, drinking, expulsion from school, etc. Why do young people have to prove how tough they are? The turbulence of the civil rights movement and anti-war movement manifested itself in many families back then. My parents couldn't understand our fondness for Led Zeppelin, Jimi Hendrix, Woodstock, Black Sabbath, etc. Seems like every generation gets "worse" according to the previous generation.

Got beat up a lot.

Shocker.

And they said that same kind of thing about halloween candy pretty much everywhere.

I think you should work on being a little more positive. Start small.
You want to live and die in negativeland, miserable?

gtZip wrote:I think you should work on being a little more positive. Start small.
You want to live and die in negativeland, miserable?

Just keeping it real.

And they said that same kind of thing about Halloween candy pretty much everywhere.


In the 60s down in Portland if you were brave enough to get past the tricks you would be treated well. Candy and home made goodies of all variety.
The only " danger " was possibly being hit by a water balloon by the dick headed teens.

As it grew late my father would take us to the older side of town.
We could go house by house where the retired folk lived and score big on the treats, we could see the porch lights go out behind us as we passed along the streets the last of the trick or treaters for the year.

The weeks before Christmas I would load my wagon with mistletoe boughs my father would bring home. I could sell the big boughs house to house for fifty cents a bunch.
My folks never had to worry about us.

The "poisoned candy" scare was traced to the Hershey and Mars families... to sell more prepackaged candy.
Good ole corporatism... keeping things safe, and easy to swallow

A business model even governments can succeed with

I went to see my original home (until I was 5) and saw some building. I went to the door to look in and saw some animal head on the wall and found it's some kind of unmarked testing facility or something... not too sure. the second house I lived in for 13 ys is still there. the dead end street goes a lot further... I was surprised to think a duplex could last so many years... it's been about 5 yrs since I last went there... kinda want to go see again now.

I actually had a trippy dream the night after I read this post. Seeing the place where I was born and raised until I was 18 has some profound memories. Some good, some not so good, and some awful.

Last time I went to see where I grew up, I expected it to be colorful, and a lot larger in appearance. I grew up in a court where the yards and houses looked nice. When I saw it, everything was tacky. The house on the corner was condemned, and all the windows were boarded up. The house I was raised in had 4 ft. weeds for a lawn. I could barely turn my car around trying to get out of there too. It didn't look like it was the same place one bit.

I'll spare you the details on the residents, the cops, and my upbringing, but I'm not surprised the place turned out so shitty.

Mike Nobody wrote:

gtZip wrote:I think you should work on being a little more positive. Start small.
You want to live and die in negativeland, miserable?

Just keeping it real.

Maybe this will help.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lgT1AidzRWM