A reader commented on Facebook that it was too bad that yesterday's post didn't include any inside shots of The New House,
In the process of my sifting I came across another good shot of the exterior of the house,
1. Our dog Brownie in the front bay window of the living room.
2. My Aunt Mary in the living room.
3. My brother and his wife at the other end of the living room.
4. Tom and me on our wedding day in the front bay window of the other living room, which we called the far living room. My mother made the partially visible stained glass piece hanging the window behind us.
5. Me sitting at the other end of the far living room.
6. The bedroom that my sister and I shared. There was a bump in the street in front of our house and, as Byberry Road was a busy street at all hours, while lying in bed I'd feel the house rattle a little every time a car or truck passed our house
7. My brother in the dining room. I made the arty collage on the wall and the arty "Shalom" hanging on the basement door during my young, arty phase.
7. Me with my prom date in the dining room ( See post from 5/16/2014: "A Tale of Two Proms, Part One: The Bad Prom").
8. My sister in the kitchen.
9. My father at the kitchen table, his favorite sitting spot in the house. Our kitchen table was a picnic table that my mother covered with a piece of linoleum. One of our childhood pastimes was setting a piece of paper on the table and running a crayon over the paper to bring out the design on the linoleum table top.
10. View from the dining room of my father in the kitchen.
11. A better view of the linoleum top on the kitchen table. That's my daughter Maria and my nephew Joseph apparently having a snack during a visit with Grammy and Pop-Pop.
12. A bunch of the grandchildren sitting on the kitchen table.
13. My sister-in-law hanging laundry in the back yard.
The house on Byberry Road was bought by a hippy-esque family with six or eight children and - according to the old neighbors with whom my mother still communicated - strange and unsavory ways. The parents eventually moved out and left a few teenagers behind who trashed the house then abandoned it. According to the neighbors the house became for a while a refuge for some homeless squatters, whom the neighbors preferred over the previous hippy owners.
I don't know who owned the house when it eventually went on the market looking like this:
To be continued...