My Neighborhood--Take One

In 2003 I walked around my neighborhood and took photos of the houses I remembered. 

The neighborhood had changed since I lived there.

More has changed now, when I am telling the story in 2015.

I grew up in West Point, Nebraska.  In 1969 we moved into a big two story house with full basement at 610 West Park St.  I loved that house. I still do.  I especially liked the big front porch and the big bay windows on the south and east.  When we moved in my parents put in new carpet. Under the green high/low carpet that has been there for over 40 years is a very pretty wood floor, especially by the bays. I remember when we got carpet because I stepped on the tack strips around the edges of the walls.  That may have been one of the times I got a tetanus shot for stepping on something.  I never wore shoes.  I remember the basement, a big open space divided on its length into two large rooms, one of which had a ledge under the east bay that we could play on.  Eventually, Dad carpeted that space with carpet from the high school when it was re-carpeted, put up his book cases and used the ledge for his models, making our lovely play place into an office.   The other half was big enough for a ping pong table and I played many games down there with my friends. 

I don’t remember our house being any color except white with red trim.  When we moved in it was gray with yellow trim.  My folks put aluminum siding on all of the house except the tall gables, which had to be kept painted and that wasn’t done until it was badly needed, then they hired someone to paint it for them.  Dad is afraid of heights.  I am too.  

In the last few years they've put siding over the gables and trim. Red wasn't available for the trim so they chose black.  Dad painted our red front door black to match and put a bow tie on it.

Catty-corner* northeast from our house lived the Sendon’s.  We could look out our east-facing bay window across Maple St. over our basketball court into their front yard.  Their two boys were my brothers ages and they played together when they were young.

*catty-corner means “diagonally opposite.”

Abutting our backyard and across Maple from the  Sendon’s, and sharing our small block was Nina’s house.  She was an old lady that was friendly with Mom.  I don’t remember being in her house very many times.  I thought she was a really old lady, and I think she was.  I remember her daughter had white hair.  Wild blue phlox grew profusely under the shade of the big tree in her front yard.  I got a start from those plants after they sneaked over to our yard.  I used to mow her lawn when I was a teenager.  She never wanted it mowed until it was 12” high and pushing through that jungle of weedy grass with our push mower  really tried my patience. (I don’t know when self-propelled mowers were available, but we didn’t have one in the late 1970s),  I received $5 for my efforts, which I didn’t think was enough even considering the rate of inflation.  It was every bit as big as our own yard, but I was permitted to mow ours more often. We used to swing on the weeping willow tree on the east corner of her lot, at least until our parents found out.  She also had a big mulberry tree on the west corner and we could pick and eat our fill.  If we picked enough we would eat the berries on ice cream.

This house is gone now.  It’s further north of ours, across Bridge St. from Nina’s.  Kuchera’s lived there.  (Coo’-che-ra) They kept a hatchery east of their house.  We used to play some in the tangle of trees behind their house.

They were gone when I took these photographs of the house and hatchery.  They didn’t hatch chicks here in my memory, but I always liked to go over in the spring when the chicks came in to look at the cute, little cheeping things.  Mom had it easy.  If she was short of eggs she could send one of the kids over with 50 cents and an egg carton to get some.  Mom usually tried to get white eggs for us to color at Easter time.  One time all they had were brown ones.  I suppose we colored those.  Mom never had enough extra money to buy extra eggs.

Heading west from Kuchera’s we would walk two blocks down Bridge St. to the curve that curled around the Kloke’s house.  Right at the corner they kept a pig.  We would walk down just to look at it.  They had chickens as well and that is where I first watched a chicken flop around after its head was chopped off.  Now I knew what the saying means, “running around like a chicken with its head cut off."  As the years went by the pigs and chickens disappeared and now the gravel drive that used to separate two pieces of Kloke property, is a paved road connecting to the also paved Bridge St. There is a greenhouse/gift shop on the other side now. 

Around the corner, on the east side was their house.  The Kloke’s were friends.  We lived in their trailer court for the first few years of my life.  I remember walking by myself from the trailer, out the gate of our fenced yard and down to the neighbors.  I think that neighbor was the Kloke’s daughter. She had a little girl my age.  They moved away but would come back every summer to visit and I would play with her again. 

I never knew who lived in this house. I was heading back east on Park street, toward our house .  The lovely flower garden on the concrete pad was once a gold fish pond with a stone birdbath in the center.  It was a unique area with rock chairs next to the pond. I remember seeing fish in the pond long, long ago.  For most of my memory it was an empty concrete hole.  I imagine it wasn't easy to keep it from leaking.  These owners have solved the problem with an attractive floral display.

Nearly home now, I walk past this housing area that has taken the place of a little house belonging to Mrs. Gelster.  We could see her house out of our east facing kitchen window, looking through the tall row of poplar trees.  She was one of the old ladies I liked to visit with a bouquet of violets in the spring. We used the lot north of her house to grow potatoes one year.  All I remember about that was the plethora of potato bugs and that I was bit on the lip by an ant.  We may have been picking off potato bugs, but I'm not sure. 

When we first moved there, there was a shed in back of her house where someone raised doves. I have no idea if it was connected to the Gelster's or not.  We would walk by and listen to the doves cooing and flappity flapping when they flew away.  They make a lot of noise when they roost in  large numbers.  

One of my earliest memories living on Park Street is the kittens that belonged to that house.  They followed us home one time and I have a vague, unsettling memory that they never found their way back.  I can’t remember anything else about that incident, but they didn’t stay with us.  We had other cats, but that is another story.

Directly south of our house lived the Hills. We could see their house from the front porch. I think we kids were slightly afraid of them since they were old and we didn’t know them very well.  We could look straight across over their back yard and the back yards of two other houses all the way to the highway.  Since then, new owners have built an enormous metal building in the way.

Part two coming next week.