No, I have driven by a few times. My DH and I were in my hometown at the begining of this month~~I love it. The people that bought/live in my home are folks I know, so it would be not problem to go in. It would not be a good memories for me same as your DH. I have sat across from it and just thought about my life there~~maybe if I did not know the folks it would be easier~~they would want me to talk over old times;(

Only via Google Street View. :-)

I spent my first 22 years in an apartment in Queens. I moved out when I got married, and my parents moved to Florida the next day. Most of my friends had married and left before I did, so there was no reason to go back. But I've heard it's still a nice neighborhood, and Google's photos confirm that.

Since my childhood home burned, I am not able to visit; however, if I could visit, I would think back on nothing but happy memories and loving parents. We were not blessed with too many material things in those days but we were rich in every thing else.

I have driven by...but the folks that I know there say they are not all that friendly, so I justlook and reflect...take a photo or two.. We will visit in the fall again maybe
..

Only by them, not inside - there was more than one. The first home my parents owned, my dad built. My sister and I think of it as 'the big gray house' when in fact it was tiny, two bedrooms. A two story addition has been added to one end and it's nothing like my memories.

I rarely have reason to be on the rural but residential road where the house I lived in from age 7 to 18 is located, but the last time I did drive down it, I almost missed the house. There is a row of 8' rhododendrons all the way across the front of the lot, all but obscuring the view of the house from the street. It looked well kept though. I think going in might feel odd, we lost my dad while living in that house and I think it could be an emotional visit to share with current owners I don't know at all.

No, but I have seen it on Google and my brother has driven by it. The neighborhood was changing by the time we sold the house after my father's death. My parents bought that house because of my pending birth as their 3rd child. I lived there till I was 20. We had an empty lot next door where the neighborhood played baseball, fox and hound, kick the can, mumbley peg, etc. Now a house has been crammed onto that small lot. I had a happy, loving childhood, but both of my parents died while we lived in that house.

I got to see the house I spent the first year of my life. It looked very dated. The homeowners said they "always wondered who chose those colors." I wondered what my parents were thinking too, but it was the style of the time.

Yes, I grew up in Cincinnati and my mom lived there long after I married so I visited it a lot. Since it was sold we have driven by it many times. My sisters have not. Too emotional they say. My children loved that home too as they were born while mom lived there.
Mary

I drove by my childhood home as well as the schools I attended sometime when I was in my 30's. I've never been inside since my parents moved to a different house when I was about 19.

Yes, Saturday -- my mother still lives there! Both grandparents homes are still in the family. The picture below is of the house my great-grands built in 1904 when they were a young couple. My cousin and his wife brought it from my grandmother's estate when they married and have been wonderful stewards of our family's heritage.

I'm afraid my DH would have the same memories as Sue's DH if he were to visit is childhood home. He hasn't been back since his mother died 20 years ago. Luckily it is on the other side of the state and we will never have a reason to drive by. But we live a block away from where his maternal grandparents lived and where he does have good memories. The house is gone now, but the big magnolia tree his grandmother planted is still in the side yard.

I spent the first two years of school living with my grandmother in town. A few years ago, I passed through the little town, and noticed the owners of grandma's house were having a garage sale. What luck!! Of course, I stopped, as a "shopper" and had a nice conversation with the owner. Now I finally had nerve, and told her how I had lived there at one time. The lovely lady invited me in to look around, and gave me a spider plant as gift. The house was not changed too much, but the huge walk in closet, serving two bedrooms, was not used as such any more.

Not a chance. It's across country (thousands of miles!), but I just went back to my high school after 30 years of being gone, and it all came flooding back. Instantly... all the bad, good, and hard work. It was the bandroom. My son playing the same flute I played in the same room, was nostalgic. I never really knew the "sickening" part of nostalgia (read the definition if you don't know what i mean) until that moment last week. I had a clue, but truly knew? Nope. He doesn't attend my old school, but since his school has no marching band, he can join any in the area, and of course he picked my alma mater!

Yes, but it was torn down to make way for a street. But, the small white church across the street was still there. I used to watch the brides come out of the front door from our porch.

I went back to my first apartment as a young adult and I was happy to see the building was renovated and looked even better than when I lived there.

My parents had a very, very modest little two bedroom house. It was one that the home builder built the shell on your lot and you finished it. They started building it in 1949. We lived there until I graduated from high school in 1965, and my parents sold the house and moved to a nearby town. There was going to be an apartment building built on the site, so someone moved the house about five miles away. A high school friend who lived near the site where the house was moved told me to drive by and look at it.......they had made it into a two story house and bricked it! You could still see the "print" of the little original house, if you knew what it was. I'd love to see inside it. I don't even know if it is still standing. It was a very cheaply built little house...I can't imagine all that weight on it. Anyway, I haven't thought about it in years. It isn't too far away....I would like to drive by and look at it again. I would never be able to ask to look inside...but like Phyllis, if they were having a yard sale...I'd stop and talk to them and maybe...........

What a lovely house, Mojomom!

I have been to all my childhood homes as drive-bys.....one in NJ, 2 in Ohio, and the one I call home in So Cal. The folks who now live in my Cal house redid the whole thing inside and out so it doesn't look the same. They are nice people and let all 3 brothers and ex SIL tour the house on different occasions and take pictures.....they did a very nice job remodeling. One of these days I hope to get a chance to go see it again.

The other houses were pretty much as I remembered, but the yard in the one Ohio house was so much smaller.....seemed like a huge expanse back then...and the house next door where I had a friend and used to play was like a mansion to me as a kid, but it's just a regular house. I still remember the wonderful smell of the attic in that house.

Oh, yes. My sister and I own it along with the farm and the house sets along the river. I was just in it the other day. I have not lived there in near 60 years.

Sue

I bought my childhood home! My mother passed away and a year or two later my father remarried and moved to another town. He sold the house to my husband and me (we've since divorced). Unfortunately, 3 years after we bought it it was destroyed in a fire and we lost everything.

Did anyone think about Google street view? it's how I "visit" my childhood home.

Here is a link that might be useful: where I lived a very very long time ago.

Lovely home, Mojomom!

Sheilajoyce, I, too, had play space next door. Our house was set on two lots. When my mother moved to a condo the new owners took an option on the side lot, but didn't buy it. Mom eventually sold the lot for 'best price' to a builder. He built a graceless little piglet of a house and probably made a good profit just due to location. I miss the big green lawn -- the one I hated when I had to mow it with a tiny electric mower.

Well, dangitall, I've now spent most of the afternoon looking up my childhood home, my Grandma's house just down the street, and the first apartment and first house DH and I had together.

Childhood home still has a brick planter i remember helping Dad build when I was 5. Grandma's house looks fresh, and newly painted, but still basically the same.

But OMG - my first apt. with DH - I don't think we could afford to live there anymore, LOL. It was pricy (~$1000) when we lived there nearly 30 years ago, and IS in Palo Alto, very near Stanford University - but now the 2 bed, 2 bath apartment we had is over $4K/month!

And our little bungalow home just 1/2 block down the street from the apartment was a nearly uninhabitable dump when we bought it for about ~$100K. We lived there 7 years, got everything but the kitchen completed, and did make a handsome profit when we sold. There was a lot of sweat equity in that sweet old house!

But holy crap, it's now valued at just around $2.5 million. The new owners did add another bedroom/bath - but that left them with essentially no yard at all. That lot is TINY!

Lots of memories - thanks Chisue!

It was in another state and burned down years ago, along with most of the houses on that block, if I google it's just an empty lot...it used to be an older but nice neighborhood, my mother, born in 1923, grew up in the house next door to where we lived (it was my grandmother's house)...everyone used to care for their homes and yards...we moved in 1959 and went back to visit relatives in 1966, the whole neighborhood had gone downhill by then...later it wasn't even a safe street to be on. Too bad...I had a good childhood there (Youngstown, Ohio)

Thank goodness it isn't an option. No good memories there. One was razed, and is a parking lot now, and the other..... well, who cares, no happy memories there either. I was 9 when we moved from an 4th floor walk-up apartment to our own house.

Moni

Mary_C -- Well, there's time you'll never get back! LOL

Friends looked and looked for something in the Bay Area. Finally bought a townhouse (with a zillion stairs and an elevator) for a LOT of money. But it's near their DD, whose small house replaced a little old bungalow on a tiny lot -- also cost millions. At least the younger generation is still working... and earning millions, but working 24/7!

I remember visiting an old boyfriend who lived in Menlo Park while getting his doctorate in physics at Stanford. The town was nice, but nothing to write home about then. (I thought Atherton was lovely when DH and I visited former neighbors of mine while staying in San Francisco on business.

I haven't been to the old neighborhood since my mother moves from it over 2 years ago. I always got the eebie-jeebies when I went there. Someday in the distant future, I'll take a ride there just to see how it has changed if I still live in the area.

My parents bought the hose i grew up in, in 1946 - after daddy came home from the war.

The frame house was built in the early 1890's and has a wrap around porch, that is still there.

When we sold it, the realtor had a watercolor made of it, and that picture is now in my current home, hanging at the top of the stairs.

If you want to see it, go to the link or Google "106 Washington Ave, 08108" and click on street view - it has been well taken care of by the owners that bought it from us.

Here is a link that might be useful: Where I grew up

This post was edited by monica_pa on Tue, May 27, 14 at 19:15

As I posted in the What Don't you miss thread I visited the house I grew up in just about a week ago while in Cincinnati to visit my father in the hospital. It is now owned by a woman (and her husband) who lived two houses up the street when we lived there, and who we always used to play with as kids.

I only saw the main floor, with the kitchen, the living room, and our grandma's room, but even that sparked quite a few memories, especially since the kitchen still has the cabinets my father installed.

At one point during my visit, the husband reached for something on the top shelf of the pantry closet, and I remembered my mother standing on a step stool reaching for something in the back of the pantry, and happened to touch the electrodes of an industrial size capacitor that my father had brought home from work. The capacitor discharged its charge into her arm (perhaps as much as 400 v) knocking her back off the stool, and frightening her quite badly. I don't think she was injured, but I remember she was really angry with my father.

Our childhood was for sale a few years ago and I went through it. My Dad had done a lot of carpentry in it and that was still there. The New Owners had made some changes and I wasn't crazy about some of them. I would have loved to move back there, but DH didn't want to, so we didn't. I like the house we are in so, I can't complain.

I have been in the living room, dining room and kitchen and backyard of the home twice. It is in Bakersfield, CA. Each time I went in it it was owned by different families. Both were Spanish speaking. My mom sold it in 1977 to a Hispanic family. Now the neighborhood has drive-by shootings. It was fun to see it twice.

All the time -- my mom still lives there. The front portion was the original schoolhouse in the village... the walls are solid slate to be used as blackboards. My "back yard" was the elementary school yard with high school track and football field. :)

It is so sad to read of all the homes with bad memories or that were burned down.

This post was edited by party_music50 on Wed, May 28, 14 at 9:37

I live about 2 miles from where my family home is. We live about 1 mi. from DH's parents and his family home.

I see my family home every time I go into town. I have been in it once, a couple years ago. They took out walls between kitchen and living room and "front room". Redid bathroom and kitchen. They did a nice job to modernize it. I adored our old home. I can say I had a very, very happy childhood with my parents and 5 siblings. We also didn't have a lot of money, but we were truly always happy.

I'm so sorry to read that some people did not have a happy childhood. That just seems criminal to me.

I get to see all my siblings and one of only 2 remaining siblings of my mom's this weekend in Md. My niece is getting married. I can't wait for all 6 of us to be together again.

just last summer my sis and I stopped at our childhood home...it's been in the same family since my parents sold it in 1968...we had driven by the summer before and noticed that there were upstairs windows installed...it had been a one story all the years we lived there...it is now lived in by the grandson of the man who purchased it from my parents...He has four children so opened up the attic and put in 2 more bedrooms and a bath...it looks totally different from when we lived there but it was fun to see it!

Heck, I still live in it. Built in 1875. Same layout, lots of paint, nails & glue. Grandfather's funeral was held in the Parlor.

Sadly mine is long gone and is now a Shake and Steak.

Mom was the last house in an all commercial area, and was constantly being pestered by realtors. She reluctantly sold it and we moved her into a brand new condo.

Tore my heart out when I went back to help with the move to see the huge maple tree in front torn down as well as all the rest of the trees. The front porch had river bed rocks on the front and was really different.

The original property of some 100+ acres was originally a civil war grant to a soldier. After his death the family subdivided it and our place was on 12 acres of it. Spent many summers roaming the fields, going fishing in a pond and stream not far from the house, and doing our gardening chores every year. For as long as she could, mom always planted a "small" garden.

A long time ago. It was ONE of my childhood homes, the first I remember. I drove by, came back and thought....why not...I went up to the door, knocked, and told the owner's I used to live there. They let me come in. It had been pretty much totally remodeled. Didn't even look like the same house.

In March I finished removing the last vestiges of at least three generations from my father's house. It was heart wrenching, confusing and just plain stressful. New buyers settled yesterday and have much needed extensive renovation plans. Did I mention it was "vintage"?
They have invited us to see it when completed, don't know if I have it in me to go there ever again. I miss my dad so much, he's everywhere I look, so many things came out of his house...

Our home was custom built about 1937 by a couple who were transferred back East when the US entered the war. My parents bought it in 1942.

There were many empty lots in the area until after the war -- streets, water lines, sewers, curbs, street lights...no houses. Our block was mostly filled with brick Georgian Colonials like our home and had huge cottonwoods lining the streets (now gone). A few blocks west it looked like a ghost town.

The empty lots gave us neighborhood kids "prairies" for play beyond our own yards. When building resumed after the war, we had adventures in new excavations and skeletal framing. I don't recall any of us being injured, although we did it despite being *forbidden*!

In autumn we raked leaves and burned them along the curbs. Most houses also had a wire basket in a far corner of the yard where paper trash was burned. Between that and nearly every adult smoking cigarettes, no wonder kids had respiratory illnesses -- and tonsillectomies that didn't help.

In 1963 when I was 11 my parents built a new ranch style house. They tore the old one down at that time. It was on old two story that had been 3 houses pushed together someone had said. They saved the one part to use as a granary. My DB and his family live in the house now. So I get to see it every so often. I had a great Uncle who made a replica of the house that my paternal great grandparents lived it. It was a four square two story.
The house my DH grew up in was a tiny house that had 3 bedrooms. His brother and his wife live in it now. Do we get to see that one quite a bit too.

We both have good memories there.

I had quite a few childhood homes....we moved a lot. But my family was like Beaver Cleaver's, so it didn't matter where we called home. I feel so very sad for all of you with unhappy childhoods. That is so foreign to me. I hope your lives turned out happy in adulthood!

We just moved out of it 3.5 weeks ago...lol..
My husband is over there right now...working in the garage on a project for this house..
I have the garden planted over there too..

When the time comes...it will one day be mine legally..
Our hearts went into the remodel and upgrades it's had over the last 20 years. It's a little bittersweet...when I'm over there...but it all good..

omg downtown Hollywood apt?? not likely...it's still there, although several other buildings have been moved or changed...it was supposed to be a temporary apt that lasted us from elementary to jr hi...not a place to raise a child for sure! I can't imagine walking to school like I did now, either...

Last summer I *looked* for it, but...
it was gone.

My old elementary school is still there, but the big old wooden doors are gone, replaced by heavy glass ones.

The neighborhood is much poorer than it used to be, & the "new" complex where I attended first grade, built in 1958 for the influx of boomers, is now the "clothing center" for needy families.

made me so sad.

My parents lived in my childhood home until they recently passed away a few years ago. It was like losing a family member when we had to sell the old home place but luckily a neighbor purchased it and lovingly fixed it up. They kept thing mostly as they were but just gave it a good spit polish. Thank GOD they didn't gut the kitchen and tear out the beautiful OLD cabinets that were hand made by my uncle's father out of solid MAPLE wood! Most dummies that don't know any better would have probably ripped those out to make way for particle board junk that "looks pretty". They also had solid pecan paneling in the dining room and living room, the new owners got busy and cleaned it all up and did not tear it out. The home did need some repairs and the new owner is a handyman and fixed things that had needed repaired for a while but Dad didn't much worry about things like that, I think he was too old to care at that point. It made my heart happy to see it fixed up but yet left it basically as is.

At one time or another I have driven by every place I ever lived. My mother still lives in the house I lived in from 13 - 18, so I see it a few times a week. Inside it is as if time stood still. It was built in 1960 and still has that MCM vibe.

The house I lived in from 3 - 13 is about three miles away and I drive by every so often. It was for sale once and I was hoping for an open house to go see it, but it sold very quickly. I did see the pictures online and it looked quite different inside. One thing that tickles me is the current owners always put up a lot of Christmas lights, and my father always did the same when we lived there.

From 1 -3 we lived in an apartment in center city Philadelphia and I sometimes walk past the building, which was a single home at one time. It is on one of the city's fanciest blocks, but my parents lived there because they took care of a doctor's office in the building. My mom answered the phones. My dad was in medical school and they had no money. One neighbor was Eugene Ormandy, the conductor of the Philadelphia Orchestra.

I have met someone from every family that has lived in my current house. One of them was driving by and stopped to say hello so I invited her in. She said it looked entirely different. I'd love to see old photos of the inside of my house.

I want to but my parents forbid me to even drive by...We lived in Whitehaven TN, just outside of Memphis and less than a mile from Graceland.
That neighborhood is now very, very rough. Lots of gang and drug activity. I did "skirt" around once and knew enough to high-tail it out of there! (I was by myself on business)
I think it may be best if I just hold on to memories.

I live across the street from where I grew up, so yes, I've visited from time to time,

My brothers and I visited our childhood home in 1993, when my oldest son got married in my home town. The older lady who lived there was gracious and let us in. So much smaller than I'd remembered. It has since been foreclosed upon, rebought and extensively remodeled. My brothers have seen the inside; I have not. I went to a garage sale at our first house in Cincinnatiâ¦lived there from 1971-79. They had big dogs and it was in really sad shape. Our house that we lived in from 1979-2004 has had all the landscaping removed and at Christmas, there are no decorations, even though they aren't Jewish and have a small child. My best childhood friend in Michigan used to visit her grandmother in Cincinnati every summer. We would write back and forth, and I recently asked her what her grandmothers' address on Rose Hill Ave. was and i went and took pictures for her of the house. Still a stunning neighborhood.

I rejoiced to hear some of your stories about happy childhoods ... and was sad to hear of people who were disappointed that their former homes or/and neighbourhoods had deterioated.

But especially sad to hear that a few of you had endured such unhappy childhoods that you felt that you couldn't stand going back.

Memo to Country Sunshine (and some others):

"You don't ask - you don't get!".

Take courage in hand, put on a big smile ... and sashay up to the front door.

If they say, "No" ... you're no worse off.

Right?

We had a big 36' x 40' old white brick farmhouse near London, Ontario, when I was a child, with six bedrooms upstairs , three of them with built-in closets, and a big old walnut clothes press in one of the ones lacking one - Dad's bedroom was downstairs, would be an office/den, now, off of the large kitchen/dining room. Brick summer kitchen and woodshed on the back.

Mom became ill when I was just short of 6, Grandpa (Dad's) and Grandma had moved in with her sister a few years before when Dad took over the farm. Grandpa died not long after Mom got sick so Grandma moved in with us and the farmhand's wfe helped in the house.

World War II started in '39 when I was 10, so my younger brothers and I were the only hep that Dad had on our large farm.

I lived there till I was 17, visited later after finished college (fiends from church had bought the farm when we moved west [that was "friends" from church: dratted keyboads!]).

We had a quite close family ...Grandma used to get after us, e.g. for running up the back stair and sliding down the banister of the front stair ... telling us that she'd give us the strap ... but we laughed at her, saying that she, who had a bt of a hard time getting around, having inward cuvature of the spine, couldn't catch us! I have happy memories of the place: Mom not being there was just a fact of life.

It was torn down a number of years ago, when they put a freeway from Sarnia, across from Port Huron, to join the one between Windsor(Detroit) and Toronto that goes just south of London.

ole joyful