Book of Me, Written by You Prompt 5 – Your childhood home

 
The Book of Me, Written by You. A writing exercise that I am taking part in because I always feel like I am chasing dead people and not documenting the "alive" people. I hope to teach you a little about me as I learn about you.
 
My childhood was a transient childhood. When I was born I was brought home to a rented half house on Portage Drive in Akron, Ohio. Shortly after that I was moved to Germany for 3 years, then back to Portage Drive in Ohio, my grandmother lived there. When I was 6 my family moved to the Rochester, NY area and there was an apartment in one town, then another apartment in another town then we moved to another town were we lived in a real house on a horse farm. My father didn't work for the farm so once they hired a foreman for the farm, we had to move again and this time we at least stayed in the same town, just down another road and renting another house on a dairy farm. I think out of all the places I lived as a child that was my very favorite house. We stayed there a couple of years and then after my mother remarried, we moved to our final family home. A real house in a real neighborhood in the town that has become my "home town". I have always envied those people that lived in one place for year after year or taken on the house they grew up in. Even in my adulthood I moved and moved and moved, all local to Rochester but I never seemed to stay anywhere longer than 2 years until my husband and I bought our house. I loved and was so happy in that house and lived there for 8 years. I just couldn't keep it after my divorce and never really recovered from that loss. Again to the apartment dwelling, convincing myself that I didn't want to own property. Recently I bought a house and have never been happier and I intend to stay here until I die. This house.. home.. has been a long time coming.
 
My favorite childhood house was the dairy farm house in Scottsville, NY. Just a small two story farm house on a county corner. Two corners were corn fields, the third a cow pasture. Now those are my kind of neighbors! I was a free spirit during that time. Running and playing, mini bikes and jumping out of barns, hay bale fights. Kids just being kids and healthy and vibrant. We drank so much milk living there that I will probably never have a broken bone! Some of my friends had horses. I was never a good horse person and they can usually tell they intimidate me so you can probably tell how my riding went and the skills I didn't garner from this time in my life. Looking at the house there was a front porch in the middle and two windows on either side of the porch. One side was my parents' bedroom (the left two windows), the center porch was where the front hallway and dining room were and the two right windows was the living room. Behind the dining room was the kitchen with a door out the left side of the house and a door out to the garage that was behind the kitchen. Behind the living room was this huge walk in closet and then a pretty large bathroom. I didn't care then like I do now but all the floors were wide plank hard wood floors that just gleamed. To have floors like that now! I love rustic and homey. My parents had a very high huge bed so my sister and I would run from the living room, through the dining room, through the hallway into their room and vault over the bed smacking into the outer wall and giggling like mad as we plunked to the floor. Between the kitchen and bathroom was the staircase going upstairs and once up you turned left and would walk straight into my bedroom or turn left, then turn left to walk down the hallway to my sisters bedroom. One day my sister and I decided to "live together" and I moved all my stuff into her room. By day 2 we were fighting and we had hung a rope across the room with sheets hanging. It proved to be a problem when I couldn't use the door and she couldn't get to the closet without either of us crossing enemy territory lines. My mother said enough and told me to move back to my room. 
 
Our bedroom windows were dormer like and were square and opened inward to the side. I used to climb out those windows and run around on the roof when my parents were away. Once I trip and flew off the roof and ended up snagging the lightening rod with the hem of my blue jeans. Thank goodness for bell bottoms! I smacked against the side of the house hanging upside down holding onto my pants until my friends could pull me back up and guess who never "ran the roof" again?? :)
 
In the front yard there was a huge lilac, I am betting this thing was 25 feet around. We would run around and around chasing either other around it. Two wild plum trees were at each corner of this white house with green trim. Those trees fell very easily to storms. By the road was a buckeye tree. Yes, we and the boy next door were the children throwing buckeyes at passing cars. Until one night one very angry man chased us down and into the house, I was never more terrified and that was the last time I ever pinged a passing car.

In looking for pictures for this post I used Google Earth. It is so sad to see the condition of this sweet little house.

 
I left home when I was 17 years and 4 months old. I left the safety of my parents' home and moved to Muldraugh, Kentucky where my new husband was a private at Fort Knox. That started my next transient lifecycle as an adult.