I was born in an apartment across the street from Walnut Park. After Dad was home from Germany in 1945 for several months he bought the house on Ravenwood. The house had been built in 1905, but it was still a nice place. The family lived there from 1945 until 1968.
I loved that house as much as any other that I lived in and Joyce and I lived in 26 other places before moving to our, now, my current residence. We had lived in far better and far worse places, but Ravenwood is the one I loved most of all. Ravenwood was and still is where my roots came from. I have pictures showing parts of the house, but not the entire house from a distance. That picture has been lost.
The house was a 2 story place, with a large dining room, a large living room, a narrow kitchen and a long hall and entryway downstairs with 2 large bedrooms upstairs and a bathroom. Mom and dad and I had the front bedroom, while grandma and grandpa had the back bedroom.
Five years later my first brother came into our lives. At that point dad bought us bunk beds. My brother had the bottom bed because he was just a baby, while I had the top bunk. You regular readers know about me having nightmares and falling out of bed as I fight off the bad guys. The top of my current bed is 22 inches high. The top of the bunk beds was about 5 feet high. I was 5 years old then and I managed to fall out of that bed down to the floor on a regular basis. I would hit the floor and then get up and go over and lay down on the floor on my dad’s side of the bed. When he woke up for work in the morning, his feet hit the floor or rather hit me. Oddly enough I was never hurt back then. Mom finally got dad to place a board along the top bunk to keep me from falling out of the bunk.
After grandma died in 1956, mom and dad sealed off the dining room from the living room and made that their bedroom. They put grandpa in the front bedroom and me and my brother in the back bedroom. There was a small alcove in our bedroom with a window there. At night I would open the window, remove the screen and climb up to the peak of the house and sit there looking at all the lights. I could see all the way to a main thoroughfare some 5 blocks away. It was always busy over there.
I lived on Ravenwood until I left for navy duty in 1963. I have so many fond memories of that house. All of those memories were good ones. Now, 61 years after leaving there I still remember those happy times.
The family Christmas of 1958. Maybe you can guess which one was me. My sister Mar would be born a year later. My last sister Joan was born in 1962.
Me and Fran in the back yard on Ravenwood 1947.
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