I posted this on Sonlight today and I was thinking I oughtta get it down for posterity somewhere so when I’m old and senile we can read this and laugh about it.
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All total, it was less than 500 sq ft with two bedrooms. They were built near the end of WWII to temporarily house the families of sailors returning from the war. I lived there in 1992.
The top kitchen ‘cabinets’ (I use the term loosely) were open metal shelves. Beneath that was one of those wide, shallow 1920s type sinks on top of a metal cabinet that was basically the size of a typical under-the-sink cabinet. I usually spent at least an hour every morning doing dishes: my ds’s baby bottles and the remnants from the previous evenings entertainment (we fed a lot of the geo bachelors from dh’s ship).
To the left was the stove… I think it was there when the house was first built… It was not big enough for a 9×13 pan in the oven. We cooked mostly outside on our grill. I could sit with my rear on the chair pushed into the kitchen table (pushed all the way against the window) and reach to do the dishes. I was able to put a shelf up on the side wall next to the back door. The only thing I ever used the table for was to sit my son on in his bouncy seat or occasionally as a counter when I was cooking.
To the right was the refrigerator, hot water heater, and some extra space. A few of my neighbors had enough space for a washing machine (which is what this space was intended for) but we had a HUGE refrigerator that took up more space than everyone else’s. No room for a dryer, though. Clothes had to be hung out on the line. (I used my neighbor’s washer or went to the laundromat.)
As to the refrigerator… One day our hot water heater died. The dragon lady came to check it out and spent the entire time in awe of this refrigerator we had. It must have come from some long-gone Admiral’s house or something (remember, the base was in the process of closing so a lot of stuff got reallocated.) Anyhoo… she wasn’t sure we warranted a new hot water heater because we had such a nice refrigerator.
The entire house was black tile. Rough when you have a little guy rolling around. The walls were old-fashioned plaster, which actually were a step up from the concrete block walls in some of the housing at Great Lakes. Our bedroom was JUST big enough to put the king size bed up against two walls and leave space to walk around. We had two tall chest-of-drawers and our closet was about 2/3 the width of a typical bathtub. The other bedroom had a double bed on one wall and the baby crib on the other. No other furniture, closet the same size as in the master. We did have this little hallway to store stuff in though. These were duplexes that were designed to be configured into two 2-bedroom units or one 1-bedroom and one 3-bedroom unit. We got the hallway, our neighbors got the really big master bedroom.
Our linen ‘closet’ was three shelves built into the wall in the hallway. The bathtub did not have a shower or medicine cabinet. We had no heat or a/c. Fortunately, it was a mild summer and we moved out before winter. Every time the earth shook (earthquakes, refinery blowing up across the street) pieces of the ceiling fell. Every time dh turned his music up too loud pieces of the ceiling fell.
There were some great moments there, though. Funny things we learned…
- Putting the water hose in the gopher holes does not get rid of gophers it just makes your lawn lumpy and hard to mow with a push mower.
- Doing same with gas and a lighter doesn’t get rid of gophers, but it does entertain the neighbors.
- If you don’t water the grass, it won’t grow, and you won’t get a nasty gram from the dragon lady. <back yard>
- You can mow a small patch of lawn with a weed-eater. <front yard>
- Two zucchini plants will completely engulf a small side yard and you will not have to mow. <side yard>
- You can spray your windows and doors with Skin So Soft to keep out the sand fleas.
- If you don’t wax the black tile floors, you don’t have to keep waxing the black tile floors. What is wax anyway?
- We learned how to cook pretty much everything except over-easy eggs on the gas grill (and dh swore the entire time we lived there the next one would have a side burner. Got the side burner years later and then never used it. )
And I will never, in all my years, forget the roses! I believe they had been there for at least a generation… taller than our houses, beautiful long-stemmed buds every day ripe for the picking. Almost every duplex had a rose bush in front between the front doors. If there wasn’t a rose bush, there was another kind of flower bush that I don’t know the name of.
It was the shabbiest place we ever lived, yet I have some of the best memories from living there.
