This is where i grew up, so sad, the cute three-arched window in the master bedroom (which was small) has been stuccoed up, and the yard looks like no one cares.  My mom and dad took great care of this place which they purchased for 17k from my dad’s mom probably sometime in the late 1940s.  My brother and I did the yard on saturdays before going down to the Cinema on Eagle Rock Blvd. for a 10c movie.  I earned the money for the movie by raking and digging up dandelions from the grass. There was a loquat tree in the back yard which we climbed and ate from. A crawl space where my brother and I had a Lionel train set up with tracks and miniature houses, and props that we built, and a work bench with a really nice bench jig saw (the kind with an arm) and tools and a place to build model airplanes.

I walked back and forth to school often, and also from college  (Occidental College was only about a mile+ away, my dad dropped me off there on his way to work early in the morning). I lived there At least 23 years there, then the family moved to Hill Drive, just around the corner.

It was a tight squeeze for 5 children and two adults in this small house, (3 girls in a bedroom that need specially made small beds to fit against the wall, two brothers in bunk beds in the adjacent room) and there were sometimes cats, and a dog or two, and a neighbor’s child who was young when her mother died, and my mom kept her after school.

But it was big enough for Cub Scout meetings, and  Blue Bird meetings, and make believe dramas in the back yard as Campfire girls. A hand made play house, with a roof and windows –big enough to walk in, and some boards in the neighbor’s tree for a platform, a swingset, from which a neighbor boy jumped, breaking his arm, a place for other mischief and ouch, when my littlest sister wound her pinkie up in a bicycle gear.

Below the house on 5252 Windermere is the house which my music and art teacher lived, Mrs. Constance Braasch.  She had a tremendous influence on my life.  I still (after 70 years, play piano, she was my teacher for at least 12 years) and have a couple pictures and china pieces that we painted together.  She was a remarkable woman.