The "Louis Street House." The first house I remember! But the memories are faint and few. The hill is steeper in my memory. And there was a space under the house where the puppies and kittens that were born could be seen.
Go to Old Family Cars and memories - and a Mystery Car for more. . .

Our house in Mission Beach, during WWII, was right on the beach. (In the picture on the right, you can just barely see the ocean in back of us.) Dad was in the Navy, stationed in San Diego. This was supposed to be a vacation house, with a small kitchen, a very small living room, tiny bedroom and minute bathroom. The bathroom had a shower with an outside entrance, so when you came in from the beach, you could shower immediately. It was crowded for a family of five, but housing was scarce. We were lucky to find a place to live there at all.

"Married Student Housing"
(In 1951, for San Jose State College married couples.) These were really just "cracker boxes." The rent was $27.50 per month, furnished! That meant just barely furnished, though. I remember collecting lots of orange crates for shelves. And we had an icebox that took blocks of ice; unheard of these days (in the USA). Most of the students were veterans. Families with children had different housing, but it wasn't always available, so some of them lived in these. No one locked doors, either. One day I was soaking in a bubble bath, with my eyes closed, and a little voice suddenly said "Do you use soap?" Someone's child had just wandered in! It was not the child of someone I knew, either. This picture isn't of our house, but they all looked exactly like this.

In between the "cracker box married student housing" and this house on Mt. Hamilton Rd., we very briefly lived in an appartment on San Fernando, for an exhorbitant price per month, as I remember. Then we found this house, for $25.00 per month. All those bushes all over the house are roses, so it was truly a "rose-covered cottage." There was a bathroom inside, but only a BATHroom. The toilet was in a little house behind the big house - in other words, an outhouse! We had a couple of neighbors, but otherwise, we were quite out in the country. That meant on weekends we had lots of visitors; the car in the picture must be one of them, as I don't recognize it. When we first traveled in Europe (about five years later) it was probably a plus that we could tell people that not all houses in the USA were like the movies. And that we had actually lived in one without indoor plumbing! (From here we moved to Benicia.)

I don't have any pictures of our appartment building in Tangier, Morocco, but this is a view taken from the balcony. We lived across the street from the cemetary, and this is a photo of a funeral procession. The group of mourners in front of the pallet chanted verses from the Koran, and the group behind repeated it. When Mohammed V died (the father of Hassan II, who died in the summer of 1999) there was a very large symbolic procession that filled the street for many miles. We heard this funeral chanting often; it was a beautiful experience.

Months later we were driving south in the Ukraine, and Peter, who was about five years old at the time, suddenly, with no indication of where the thought came from, told us that we didn't have to worry when we died; he would be sure there were lots of people to chant at our funeral.

I had to put in all these pictures of our second house in Iran, because I couldn't make up my mind for just one to use. They all bring back good memories. The two upper left shots are on the street just outside the entrance to our compound. The top one is street musicians who came by from time to time, and the lower one is Peter with a taxi driver, Mohammed, who became a good friend. Above on the right is our pool, which was just below the veranda that ran across the entire front of all the rooms that comprised our kitchen, living and dining rooms, and bedrooms. (All of those rooms opened onto the veranda.) All of our floors were covered with carpets, and the shot to the left is of Sayid Ali washing a carpet, using water from one of the fountains on the veranda.

This is the house we lived in in Greeley, Colorado, when we were in graduate school. I think maybe it is the kind of house I like the best; it is not unlike the house I live in now. I would guess it dates from the early days of the 20th century, which my present house does, as well. Our landlady was quite elderly, and one of my memories of finding this house was sitting with her for an afternoon and visiting, while she was deciding whether we would be suitable tenants. It seemed to take hours, and I was really worried all the time that she would not let us rent it.

Trinidad belongs here. . .I hope I can find pictures of at least one of our houses there.

Napa is where I live now. This picture was taken in about 1991. The biggest difference is the car. It's now a burgundy colored Saab. Below, however, is a picture of the house in 1996 - the worst flood I have experienced in Napa. In our block on our street, only my house and my next-door-neighbor's house escaped water damage inside. (The water came to within about 2 - 3 inches of floor level.) Twice since that flood I have been evacuated, but the river only came to the curb each time.