According to Newsweek magazine the area where husband and I first lived and had our children has two of the best schools in the nation. One is in the top ten. This has me reminiscing about the old place and why we left.
I miss parts of our old house. It was a 1920's bungalow which was in slight disrepair when we bought it. We had 1700 square feet in a single story that had 29 windows in it. I miss the natural light that the house had. The livingroom and diningroom moldings got stripped of their awful blue color. The rest were just painted over as I lost patience with it:-) Plaster walls in the diningroom had to be repaired. The kitchen was redone. The wiring was updated and the floors were redone. The front porch which was beautiful but not used an awful lot due to so many hot and humid days had a beautifully tiled floor and I absolutely loved it. The house was surrounded by azaleas and two big oaks.
I should mention that husband redid the kitchen mostly himself. Yes, I painted and tiled but he made the cabinets and hired someone to make glass fronts. Alas, we only took one picture of the finished project. Blah.
I had painted Dr. Seuss on S2's bedroom door with his name on it. S1 had Batman on his door with his name on it.
But, we had to screw our windows shut so that no one could get it. There was a home invasion 4 houses away to the left. The man of the house was pistol whipped while the wife and children hid in the attic. Four houses to the right an older couple was also surprised by a home invasion and one of them (I can't remember which lost their spleen.). Also, a man was shot in front of some huge homes in an area that I walked in.
We lived about a 10 minute drive to downtown which had a wonderful children's museum The local zoo got a redo and we were season ticket pass holders. However, no one in our area came out to talk, let their children play etc. It was quiet. Everyone stayed inside. No one went to the same school. In our area you could go to a number of private and public schools. I think at one time I counted 6 that children in the area attended. Our car was pilfered. A friends car was gone through. Someone tried to break in while I was home with the boys one day in the back yard. The police came and looked at the screen door and at my 4 year old who was quite concerned that police would be in his house and they decided that he had done the damage to the front door even though he was four and had been playing with his brother and I that afternoon.
We decided to move. The schools are good here. For the most part the people are friendly and I live on two acres where if my neighbors decide to beat on each other I don't have to hear it.
2 comments:
Wait a minute! I'm the one who's supposed to be living in a crazy place? Why was your community targeted for so much theft. That is really scarey. I'm sorry you had to leave your home. Do you have pictures of the old place? Of course I have no idea where that other place was.
I've come to the conclusion that every place is crazy in some way shape or form. The theft problem I think was due to two things. We lived so close to the downtown area and in 1987 when we moved in the prices of homes in our area ranged from 69.000 to over 1 million. (Ours was very much in the lower range.) The neighborhood was very diverse that way. Frankly there was money and it could be taken by robbery or theft. Also, hardly anyone spoke and when you don't have neighbors speaking to neighbors crime has a way of sneaking in. It could be scary but for two weeks in the spring our area was just beautiful. I loved the azaleas and the spanish moss would just hang in large clumps from some of our trees.
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