Past Places I have Lived

This page is meant to be a place where I intend to document my life by listing all the places I have lived in my life. I guess I probably move around a fair bit, albeit in the same area towns. When I was growing up, I wasn’t too excited about all the moving, but as I grew up, I sort of appreciated the different things I experienced as we moved.

I intend to try and pull together photographs, past and present, as well as text describing these homes. My dad did this in a paper notebook that I found after his death. I found it fascinating to see how he had moved from pace to place. (for him, mostly in the service)

Being that we are now well into the 21st century, I figured it would be more “high-tech” if I did this same thing online.

1958-1963

182 Hampshire St.

Cambridge, Ma

This was an apartment that my parents rented. This was my first house. I was born at the Mass General Hospital on Dec. 19, 1958. This is the place I have all my memories of my Grandmother. She died before we moved from here.

We lived on the 3rd floor, and we were forced to move when the building had a fire. We were trapped in our apartment during the fire with heavy smoke down the front stairs, and fire on the back porch. I remember fire coming out of the kitchen wall as we fled to the bedroom. My father put a wet towel under the door to keep the smoke out and we basically and hung out the window waiting to be rescued. The firemen took me down the ladder, in a fireman’s carry over his shoulder, and my mom and dad climbing down themselves. I remember just sitting the the fire chiefs car for what seems like hours as they finished putting out the fire.

 

1963-1967

124 Prospect St

Camton, Ma 02021

My uncle Donald built this house for my parents after the fire. We owned it, and it was a great place to live.

It was a great street, with lots of kids. Halloween was the best, with tons of places to trick or treat. Our house used to get about 70 kids a night....that will tell you how many kids were in the area.

We lived right up the street from the Dean S. Luce school....right at the middle of my street. (It was a dead-end, and we were the last house on the left.) I went to the Dean S. Luce school for 1st through 4th grade.

I can’t even begin to describe the memories I had there, there were many. From the long sled path we kids made behind everyone’s house, to the huge wooded area behind our house that was a bird santuary. (with a pond next to my house filled with snapping turtles)

 

1967-1967

East San Jose Ca.

My dad had graduated college (Boston University) and we went to California because he got a job at Lockheed. (He worked at the Skunkworks, and he didn’t know it at the time, but he was working on the SR71 Spy Plane. Link 2, Link 3) We first moved to this 2nd floor apartment while we got settled in California. It was ok, but no one there had lived there for any length of time. Since the school was far away, my parents wanted to move to another place....to a house, near a school.

 

1967-1968

142 McCovey Ln

San Jose, Ca

Well, this is where we moved. It was a nice little rented house pretty much as far up on the Diablo mountains as you could go. (in those days) There was only 1 more house firther up the street. These days, the houses go another mile or so further up the mountain!

My school, the Horace Curitan School, was down the bottom on my street. I used to go down to school on bike ot skateboard. (I still have that skateboard!)

I met some great kids there, and one family in particular, the Wheiss family. We used to play chess, go out into the orchards, and do all kinds of great things. In the fields and orchards, we used to look for taranchillas and poke at them with sticks. (we were much to scared to do much else)

Well, I was in the 5th grade, and California was about a full year behind Massachusetts schools, and boy was that year easy. It never occured to me how bad that would be when we moved back to Massachusetts the next year!

Also, I was bummed out that the 1967 Red Sox had pulled off winning the Pennent the year I moved away!

 

1968

I forget the name of the street....but this was the general area

Dedham, Ma

After coming back from California, my dad was out of work (he quit Lockheed as they would NOT let him leave since it was a “secret project”...my father thought he was being blackballed and was unable to find an Engineering job) and so we lived with my Aunt and Uncle David and Anne Rapposa. (actually not at all related to us, but Anne was an orphan that my grandmother took in from a Portugese orphanage)

I believe I started off at a School in Dedham, but it was so messy. my mother sent me back to Canton . I actually went to Canton schools while there, being registered for school at a friend of our’s house on Prospect Street. (Sorry...I forget their name at the moment)

 

1968-1969

99A Lewis Street

Canton, Ma

We lived in this house which was a converted garage. It was something like 2-rooms, and very small. The people of the area were nice enough, and we were right next to Canton High School. But I wasn’t in High School and I went to a school in the downtown area of Canton, and I forget ot’s name, but it has since been closed and turned into a Senior center. (it was right next door to St.. John’s Church)

 

1970-1974

2207 Washington Street

Canton, Mass

This was a very nice house that we rented from the Kopp Family. It was origionally the barn for 2005, but was converted to a nice house. We lived on the first floor, and they lived on the 2nd floor. This house was down as sort of long driveway...the 2nd house in and right next to the Ponkapoag Golf Course.

I had my first job in this house working shagging golf balls for the teaching Pro, Kurt Sokolowski. (I made $0.50/lesson!) I think the Dineen family then purchased the house from the Kopp’s and we lived there a little longer but moved to the house up front, at 2205!

While at this house, I went to the Hansen and Kennedy Schools...and to the Canton Jr. High School....which was later replaced by the Galvin Middle School with the Jr. High School building being absorbed by the High School as it was right next door.

 

1974-1977

2205 Washington Street

Canton, Mass

This was the house in front of the last one, and right on Rt138. Mrs. Lydon owned it, and she has a son Steve (1 year younger than me) and a daughter Nancy. It was a nice house where we again lived on the 1st floor, and the Lydons lived on the 2nd. I was on High School while at this address.

 

1977-1982

362 West Street

Stoughton, Mass

I moved here after graduating from Canton High. This was the first house my parents owned since back on Prospect Street in 1966. It was a nice small ranch that my dad ended up doing a LOT of work to fix up! I went to College while in this house, and when I graduated, I went off to work at IL for a couple of years before getting married and moving of to Virginia with Cheryl.

 

1982-1983

I forget exactly where we lived....but it was around here.

McLean, Va.

We rented an apartment on the 2nd floor of an apartment building. We were thinking of buying a house, but house prices in this area were just our of sight!

For some reason, rentals were dirt cheap, and we ended up with a very nice place.

Most of the other tenents seemed to work for one secret government agency or another, and none of then could tell us where or when they worked. Some of their schedules seemed very odd.

While living here, I worked at Rixon in Silver Spring Md. I just recently found out the the Rixon site was a Superfund site of some sort. (just like my current place of employment, Sun....do you suppose this says something about me??)

 

1984

1 Washington Street

N. Easton, Ma.

When we came back from DC, we didn’t know where we would live, but we knew we wanted to buy a house. We lived in the basement of my In-law’s Daycare Center. It really was a basement.....only a little finished, but it was home and we were able to save money and look for a house from there.

 

1985-1987

70 North Rd

Chelmsford, Mass

This was the first house Cheryl and I  owned. It was a split cape that was VERY close to RT495. (our driveway was about 10 feet from the on-ramp, and there was a steady hum from the cars traveling down the road)

Other than that, it was a great house. It was sort of old, which meant it was VERY solidly built!

It did have water in the basement, and wetland in back....but thanks to some lax wetland laws back then, the town allowed me to fill the wetland and that made the house a whole lot more attractive. (we bought it for something like $62,500 in 1985 and sold it for $142,000 in 1987.) I remember when when we looked at it they were asking $90,000, and I told the realitor I didn’t want to insult the woman with my offer....and she told me to go ahead. I offered $60,000, and I thought I would be laughed off the property, but instead, we entered into a strange negootiation with the realitor shuttling offers between our car in the driveway and the people in the house.

We made a good profit when we sold it...but to be fair, we did do a fair number of improvements to it...but really nothing more than say $5000 total. (I think the fill was about $2000) Most of the improvement value came from sweat equity since Cheryl and I (and her brothers) did most of the work.

Because of its difficult location, and out having had a baby, we wanted to move....and when we went to sell it we learned why they say “location, location, location”....but we ended up selling it to a family that had a business and needed the area to park some family busininess vehicles....it was a perfect fit!

 

1987 - April 30, 2010

16 Meadowbrook Lane

Litchfield, NH

Well, the family lived a quite a while. In fact, it was the ONLY place Kristen lived having been born here and gone off to college from here. we lived here for a long time. Litchfield has grown a lot since we moved here, but it still has three farms and is a pretty quaint and quiet place.

The Manchester Airport is growing, and while it is convenient, the plane noise is starting to get to me.

 

May 1st 2010 -present

570 West Street

Carlisle, Mass. 01741

I now live in Carlisle with Doreen, Kristen, Andrew and Sarah. We rent a house here and will be here until about 2012 when we will move down to Leicester.

 

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