Looking at a parade of homes (11/17/03)

One of my readers asked me where I was from. At the risk of boring you to death, I’ll tell you. I was born in Dayton, Ohio. When I was 4 years old somebody got the brilliant idea to build Interstate 75 on top of our garage. Our house sat on the back of the lot, and the garage was across the alley. I don’t think the actual road is on top of the garage but the embankment is.

My mother says I waved bye-bye to the house when it was hauled away. I don’t remember. We sold the lot to a Polish guy named Julian who constructed a building towards the front of the lot. He built it out of concrete blocks and painted it bright blue. He then set up a boat motor repair business. I always thought that type of business was odd for Dayton, Ohio.

He must have been successful because whenever we have traveled that way I can still see that blue building from the highway.

We then moved to a farm about 30 miles west of Dayton on Darke and Preble County Line Road. We had a pink house with a silver metal roof. There was a barn, wash house, duck house and a chicken house in addition to 50-some acres of land. At some point we also built a corn crib.

We grew oats, barley, hay and corn. We had a few cows, evil chickens, nice ducks, a couple sheep, my uncle’s horses and a dog named Lassie. Hunters provided us with quail, rabbit and an occasional pheasant in exchange for being allowed to hunt on our property.

Blackberries and raspberries grew wild along the fence rows. It was the ideal place to grow up.

In later years we stopped farming and share-cropped the land. After the property was sold, the guy who share-cropped it bought it, tore down the remaining buildings, murdered the lilacs and painted the house beige. It was completely stripped of its previous identity.

When I was 17 we lived in a little house just up the road from the farm. The building started out as a toll house, therefore it was only a foot or so from the road. Subsequent owners had added on to the structure until it grew into the four rooms it had when I lived there. That house is no longer in existence as it burned down some time ago, long after we had moved out.

After I graduated high school I moved back to Dayton and the surrounding area. We lived in a subdivision of Kettering for awhile. It was the perfect place for young children as small packs of preschoolers would roam from house to house. Our yard frequently amassed an entire collection of tiny shoes that didn’t belong to anyone I ever gave birth to.

When my husband was transferred to Milford, Ohio we lived in a little town called Goshen. It is approximately 50 miles east of Cincinnati. We lived there a year before I found the actual town. I thought Goshen was just a sign in the middle of a corn field! That’s where we learned to crave Skyline chili.

My husband was offered a job in Portland about 20 years ago, and we felt the offer was too good to pass up. We have been here ever since.

I was looking forward to living in a small town similar to the ones we frequented in my childhood. I was unprepared for how important genealogy is to the people around here. If I had a nickel for every person who wanted to know who I was related to, I would be rich! When I tell them I’m not related to anyone they dismiss me as being unimportant and unworthy. I find this to be a strange reaction.

I will probably live here the rest of my life. Too bad I will never consider it to be home.[[In-content Ad]]