Looking back, via Google Streetview
They cut down the trees.
Replaced the front and side hedges.
Enclosed the backyard.
Painted the house a color that isn’t white — and the house really should be white.
But nothing that matters quite as much as the fact that they cut down the trees.
Oh, The Legal Genealogist will concede that the trees probably had to come down.
They were out of control by the year my family sold that house, in 1973.
When my father took a job in Texas, moved my mother and my youngest siblings halfway across the country, and shattered what little was left of the glue holding my parents’ marriage together.
The glue, I’m convinced, was that house.
The house they had bought and moved into after coming back from Europe in late 1954, with two little girls in tow and another baby on the way.
The house they brought not just that baby — their first son together — home to from the hospital. And not just him, but four more babies, from the same hospital, delivered by the same doctor, over the years that followed.
The house where heights were measured at the start of every school year, on the first day of school, and recorded on the basement door.
The house where birthdays and Christmases and milestones were celebrated.
The house where so many memories — of things good and things bad, things wondrous and things terrifying — were made.
The house where those trees were planted, one on each side of the walkway leading from the front porch.
You can see them here, in these last pictures I took before my parents moved away from this house. Great overgrown evergreens in desperate need of a trimming.
My mother planted those trees back when our family was young. There are different stories today as to just what they were planted for: maybe one for the boys and one for the girls. Maybe one for each of her two babies at the time. Maybe one for her hopes for the future, and one to root us in the past.
She delighted in those trees and in the way they grew. Strong, independent, a bit wild and unruly. Pretty much like the children she raised in that house.
There’s no question that the people who took them down needed to do so. Their roots were already threatening to break through the walkway when we left that house. Even in 1973, you couldn’t see the front entry or porch through their branches.
It was, I’m sure, a necessary step by the people who decided that the time had come.
But there isn’t anything that says “this isn’t home anymore” quite as much as the fact that they cut down those trees.
I do understand your feelings. There is a great cement making plant on the farm now.
The first home I remember living in was a rental. It was 1959 or 1960 when we moved in and we left in 1964 when the owner sold the property with two houseds to a developer for an apartment building. Both houses were moved about 3/4 of a mile down the street, I saw them a few years later. I have tried several times to spot “our house” but if it is still there, it doesn’t look the same, not even close.
Hm, one of my homes is now a gas station, another was leveled into a parking lot, another taken down, And others I have no idea what happened to them. Should try to see if they still exist. As you can tell I have moved around a lot!
Oh, yes, the one we built in Eastern Washington, has had all the trees but one cut down. That includes the apple trees and berry bushes. It looks so different now.
I’ve used Google Street view as my Memory Lane too. In addition, if you do a Google search on your old address you might get Zillow or Realtor listings of your old house with interior photos.
Found the home I grew up in was completely gutted and renovated on the inside and my great Aunts’ house was similarly flipped.
I’m a member of a Facebook group from my old neighborhood in Brooklyn. Half the posts are laments about the neighborhood stores that have closed in the last 50 years. Most of the buildings in the neighborhood were apartments, but there were plenty of old houses and bungalows that members have cried over when they were knocked down. Most of the responses are agreements and pats on the back, but there are occasional comments asking why the poster moved out, or whether they expected the store owners’ children and grandchildren to still be running the establishments from 1000 miles away while working their real jobs, or whether the neighborhood should be kept like a museum for those who go back every few years to walk around.
One of the trees in front of my apartment building was damaged by Hurricane Sandy – I saw it via Google Street View – and had to be replaced. I guess I always knew it was there, but assumed that it was going to be there forever, until it wasn’t.
I know that nostalgic feeling that your childhood home or neighborhood isn’t yours anymore – a hundred things can lead to it, and they can be different for everybody.
There’s no doubt that most changes are changes that needed to happen. But they can still be jarring.
Absolutely. I remember when they painted the fire escapes on my building a slightly lighter shade – what were they thinking?
Even in my current neighborhood, if I can tell the difference when they replace old rotting windows on a landmarked building with new ones that look the old, when the people who grew up there see, they’ll throw a fit.
At least it is there…
Years ago when my mother and I were on a genealogical trip; she drove us to the neighborhood she grew up in. I had never seen her childhood home, and she had not found the time to visit it either for many years (I don’t know how many).
She carefully drove through the neighborhood, explaining that she used to walk to school this way; and that, oh, over there is another landmark…
But when we got to the location, there was a big empty spot in between the other houses. The other houses in the development were similar to each other, so I could see what it might have looked like. But my mother’s house was gone, just a grassy field. I felt so sorry for her. I still do.
I recently Googled my childhood home. Such changes! The trees had been replaced with newer and probably healthier trees. An addition had been added to the east side of the house where the main entry used to be. And the main entry had been moved to the south end of the house where a huge picture window used to be. More surprising than all of those changes was just how small the lot was. It seemed HUGE to me as a child.
Your post truly touched me as it brought back emotions from selling my parents’ home just a few years ago. I’ve already seen some changes via Google Maps, and the sting has caused me to swear off checking back for as long as I can. It is truly amazing how a home can become essentially another member of the family.
Absolutely true — an extension of ourselves.
My home is now a paved parking lot in Cheyenne, WY.
Heartbreaking. Now here in Butte, MT, It is always a big fight to bulldoze a home.
I love to visit Butte’s old homes, with the push button lights and 3 foot high by 4 foo long radiators that I used to lie on to keep warm.
Always painful to see when things change like that…
I have driven within a block of the house I grew up in dozens of time (it’s a block off a major highway in another state), but I’ve never turned to drive past it. I want to keep my memories of the place as I remember it, not as what other people have done to it. I’m the only one in my family that hasn’t seen what “they” did to “our” house.