Such as your grandparents houses. I drove by one of my grandparents old houses, and the new owners have cut down the trees in the front yard, painted the house light green (like the color of sea foam), tore down the deck in the back yard, cut down the big tree in the back yard (which provided shade) AND took out all the grass. It was like seeing a part of my childhood destroyed. So that got me to thinking about my other grandparents house. I drove by it, an awesome 3 story 1890's house, had a similar thing happen to it. The new owners tore down the garage/parking shelter my grandfather built (and he WAY over engineered things, so it would still be good today), built a two car garage in the back yard (the driveway is single car wide), and painted the house (which was Navajo Red and white trim) grey and mustard yellow. And on top of that, they tore down the 2nd story deck my grandfather had built off the house (in the back yard with a convertible type set up where you could slide sections of the roof up or down). Not saying they needed to keep it exactly as my grandparents had kept their houses, but wow...it's kinda sad.
My wife's childhood home on the eastern coast of Taiwan we spent 20 years fixing up and making beautiful...I built a brick courtyard in the front and planted a hedge of arborvitae trees...painted it..made the place beautiful and restored it...my son and wife went back 2 years ago..(he grew up there in that house) and my wife's cousin had rented it out to a barber who tore down the courtyard for parking spots and ripped out the raised hardwood Japanese flooring to the concrete...made it a barbershop and an ugly, sloppy one....heartbreaking after all the love we showed that place.
The house I grew up in, in North Portland... I drove by it a couple years after had moved out. Had gang graffiti all over it, the front window was all boarded up too.
Yes! My Grandfather built a place on highway 214, just past Mt Pleasant south of Oregon City. He had a small farm there but the home area was quite distinctive. Being A Stone Mason, he built a Stone wall on property between the House and the Highway. No chance you would miss the place when going there. Now I can't even find it! Oregon City seems to have just consumed it.
All the houses I lived in in Oswego and later Lake Oswego are gone. My grandmother's house which is really old and had a dirt floor basement and a wood fired furnace, still stands but has been modernized. We had one house with a particularly large and magnificent fir tree is gone and so is the old growth fir tree that was in our front yard. My aunt and uncle's two homes are gone. One has a park in it's location and the other is in a community that has been gentrified so that the homes are all multi Million dollar homes. A home that I lived in in NW Portland from the age of 11 to 19 still stands. It was huge with 22 rooms. Got bought by a future mayor of Portland so I guess it will stand for a long time for at least that reason. Got a compliment from one of our neighbors in the home, built in 1972, that we live in now. That takes some of the sting out of losing all the other homes we once lived in. A lot of old and historic buildings in Lake Oswego are now gone. I hate that, too.
My hope is to keep my grandparents house (that my mom grew up in) in the family as a getaway/gathering place for anyone who needs it. Of course I need to make a lot of money for that.
The homes I grew up in are all torn down. Most were in the First Addition neighborhood in what is now called Lake Oswego but was called Oswego. There is one exception. There is a house in North West Portland about 2 1/2 blocks West from Good Sam hospital. My parents sold it to Bud Clark, the future mayor of Portland, who actually fixed it up and made it nicer. My grandmother's house in the middle of the block on 2nd street between 'C' and 'D' on the West side, still stands. That's where me and my parents moved to from Atlanta in 1948. Haven't been inside it in 50 years so I have no idea what it's like. I'm sure the old wood furnace and the ice box are gone. We used to get regular deliveries of ice which the ice man would bring in the house with his large tongs and then break up with his ice pick. We also got regular deliveries of dairy products from the milk man and I have the original Alpenrose milk box in my garage. We also had a guy who drove around the neighborhood selling produce from his truck. That man was Mr. Weizer who later became the produce manager at the Food Center on the North West corner of 1st. and 'A'. Weizer later purchased the Food Center and renamed it Weizer's. Later, he moved it across 'A'. I know a lot of old history about Oswego, now Lake Oswego.
I grew up in inner SEP in a large old house that was built in 1905 by a Spanish American war veteran on a 1/3 acre lot. My parents were the second owners. The yard was filled with huge old trees and gardens, and my brothers and I had a wonderful time growing up there, playing army, building forts, climbing trees and just being kids. Today, the original house still sits in the middle of the lot but it is now sandwiched between a big, tall, thin house on one side, and by two massive townhomes on the other side. The lots are tiny, with little if any yards. I pity any kids who grow up there. Welcome to Portland “progress”......
Yeah. I lived with some people for a few years, then the house burned down when I was about 15 years old. Never saw those people again either. Rented my own house after that.
I had a pretty nice house in Cupertino CA when I first moved there from Oregon. Not a bad commute to Palo Alto where I worked either. Then I had trouble with busing and stuff, so I move the family to a near by town, in the same school district. That worked out fine but for the pain in the ass. The house in Cupertino however, in now nearly under and overpass exchange of a freeway off of I 280 south. Damn! I would not want to live there.
If I didn't know you better, I'd say that sounds an awful lot like you burned the house down with those people inside. barfo
I see that K*be took out the statue of myself, that used to be by the center palm tree. WTH??? Damn L*kers....
