"Ancestral" might be a bit exaggerated for my answer to this week's Saturday Night Genealogy Fun challenge from Randy Seaver, but at least I have an answer.
Your mission, should you decide to accept it (cue the Mission: Impossible! music), is:
1. Do you recall the layout of one of your family homes (a parent's home, a grandparent's home, your first home with your spouse/SO, etc.)? Can you estimate the size of the house and the size of the rooms? What features were in each room? Can you draw the floor plan, showing doors, windows, etc.?
2. Tell us about your selected family home in a blog post of your own, in a comment to this blog post, or in a Facebook comment.
As I have reported previously on this blog, by the time I was 21, I had lived in 22 different places. So it's hard for me to think of anywhere I have lived as an "ancestral home."
I thought about writing on the one home for which I have always remembered the address, the last place my family lived before moving to Australia: 434 Randy Street, Pomona, California. We probably were there for a year to two years. But I already wrote about it for Saturday Night Genealogy Fun in 2020.
So this time I think I'll write about our customized double-wide mobile home, which we had in Villa Tasso, Florida. I don't think we had an actual street address, because Villa Tasso barely had streets. We had roads made of Georgia red clay, none of which was paved. We had our mail sent to a post office box in Niceville. We lived in Villa Tasso from about 1975 to 1979 (or at least I lived there until 1979, when I moved back to California for college).
Our "double wide" was a 60' trailer and a 40' trailer with a custom addition joining the two together. We had the longer trailer in a mobile home park in Niceville before purchasing the property in Villa Tasso. I don't remember the history of the shorter trailer. The longer trailer was moved to the property first, and later we bought the shorter trailer. Then my father started working on the addition, which of course took longer than planned. But eventually it was finished, and we had a spacious home.
The main entrance was the door to the longer trailer, which had a wood porch and stairs. You entered the trailer in the living room, and the kitchen was to the right. To the far left was a hallway that went most of the length of the trailer. The first room on the left was originally my and my sister's bedroom. Then came my brother's bedroom, the bathroom, and my parents' bedroom at the end.
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| The 60' trailer while it was still in Niceville. Walking up the stairs and onto the porch, right to left: My mother, my sister, my brother, and me |
When the addition was completed, a large chunk of the wall on the right side of the hallway went away and opened to the addition. At the left end, my father had a piano, which I liked to try to play. I could pick out melodies, but chords have never made sense in my head, so that somewhat limited how well I could play.
The other side of the addition opened to what had been the living room in the shorter trailer. It became the family den. We had a big TV in there. When I won a copy of the home version of Pong in a K-Mart coloring contest, we used to play it on that TV. That's also the TV I was watching when I heard someone's arm break during an arm-wrestling contest. I've never watched arm-wrestling since then.
There was a room to the right. At first I wasn't 100% sure about that, but you can see the doorway in this photo from my high school graduation day in 1979. The photo was taken at the opposite end of the den from the TV.
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| Back row: My mother, my sister, my grandmother Front row: Me, my brother, my mother's Sheltie June 1, 1979, Villa Tasso |
At the far side of the den to the left was a short hallway. The first room, to the left, was a small bathroom, and my new bedroom, which I did not have to share with my sister, was at the very end.
It just occurred to me that there was no kitchen in the smaller trailer. Maybe the room to the right of the den had originally been a kitchen before my father adapted the trailer for our use. I do not remember what we used that room for.
I have no idea about measurements beyond the lengths of the trailers. I suspect trailers were made to fairly consistent specs, so it might be relatively easy to find that information, if I am inspired to do so someday.
lucky you to have your own room. I did for about a year when I lived in my own apartment before marrying.
ReplyDeleteI think those few years were the only time while I was living at home that I had my own room. But there were only three of us, as compared to your six.
DeleteWith 22 moves, I can understand why you don't remember a lot about them. Villa Tasso is sure a different style of living than Pomona, CA! I used to go to the Pomona Public Library often because of their genealogy collection. Very city compared to FL's unpaved roads.
ReplyDeleteI suspect I went to the Pomona Public Library, because even as a child I liked books. Maybe we were there at the same time once, even if I wasn't reading genealogy books yet. :)
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