135 Renida Street

This is the address I grew up in but the house looked nothing like this. I planted a small tree on the left side which I later learned was a mulberry that stood bigger than the house. The yard was grassy with an apple and an almond tree in the front and a nectarine off the back porch. I hesitated to put this picture here since it evokes nothing of our modest home but here it is anyway. I was born on Woodrow Avenue, Phil refers to it as the green house, not far away and sometime around 1948 after Rosella was born Mother bought this dwelling built in 1940 for $5,000. I slept in a double bed with my younger sister, and Mother had a walk-through bedroom between the stairs leading to the second floor and the kitchen. None of the lower bedrooms had a closet but there was a wooden portable in the hall just outside the bathroom. We used the upstairs for storage of clothes and furniture unless we needed to rent the downstairs, then we lived upstairs with nothing but a hotplate. Since there is only one bathroom in the house this must have been a challenge. Before Mother died in 1962 we moved in and out of Don and Bev's home on Bonita Court while Mother was hospitalized. Once the mulberry was cut down and the front yard paved over I stopped going there. In talking with Richard and Phil the Davis family lived on Woodrow consisting of the four oldest with their parents. After their divorce Mother married my father and they lived there a while with Phil and Joyce. Don and Rich went to live with their dad. I know my father wanted Mother to get out of the bar and restaurant business. Both Rich and Phil remember me living on York Street as a baby. Rose says she was born in the back room of the Chick Box. When Mother lost the York Street home to foreclosure we may have stayed at the apartment near the bar and restaurant before moving to Renida Street. The kicker is I never knew I lived at the York Street home.