Your old neighborhood(s)

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applecruncher

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I had a medical appointment today and we took the scenic route, passing thru an area where I lived in the late 70s/mid 80s. Wow, how it’s changed. Used to be THE place for young people with good jobs and nice cars. Today it had a different look and “feel”. Lots of fast food places, convenience stores, used car lots, and gas stations. The apartment complex I lived in had a lake with ducks…….good thing I didn’t have time to take a closer look, but I could tell things are different now. Not really a “bad” area, but nothing like it used to be.

OTOH, the suburb on the other side of the city where I lived in when I was in my early 20s has stayed nice – homes and lawns taken care of, very few apartments (no new ones in 40+ yrs). Cute bus stop corrals. Cost of living there has actually risen quite a bit.

Falcon, you have mentioned how your old neighborhood in Detroit has deteriorated. I haven’t been to Detroit since the late 60s - when it was vibrant and exciting, but I’ve heard things and looked at pictures. The bleakness is overwhelming. (Decline of the auto industry, other factors......and don’t even get me started about Kwame Kilpatrick. :mad:) It’s said you’re lucky to get $5k for a house in Detroit now. Incredible. However, I did take time to look up a current picture of the house where my old bf and his family lived, and that neighborhood is still 'okay'.

I really like the area where I moved about 8 yrs ago. It’s always been nice, quiet, clean, streets (and yards) well-maintained. I feel safe. I think I’ll stay put. :)
 

I took a sentimental journey a few years ago and drove to the four houses I had grown up in in Indianapolis. My grandparents' house where I lived until I was two and the house that my parents built in 1949 were unchanged, but the neighborhoods have gone downhill badly. One was changed beyond recognition but the neighborhood was still good. One had been torn down and a new house built on the site.

Then I took a sentimental journey to the two places I lived in the Detroit area in the 1970's. Our house in Ferndale had changed very little, but the apartment we lived in in Detroit was nothing but a hulk, windows broken out and roof missing. It used to be a through street - West Willis Street in the Cass Corridor but now it was a dead end. I had to do about a 10-point turn to go back up the street and there were some characters who obviously meant me no good hanging around. I was glad to get out of there.

When I was in Istanbul in April, I thought about catching a ferry over to Yalova where we lived, but an earthquake pretty much destroyed the town and it was rebuilt as a "holiday" town. I'm sure that nothing I remembered was still there, so I passed on visiting.

I've lived in various parts of the Orlando area since 1978. Nothing much changes there. It just gets hotter and hotter.

Last year, I visited my other grandparents' house in Portsmouth, Va., where I lived during a year of college. My grandfather built it in the late 30's of brick and cypress wood and I swear that it could take a direct nuclear hit and still be standing. It hadn't changed since I last saw it in the 1970's.
 
Last year, with the help of Google Streetview, I looked up every place I ever lived, including some rental property. They were all still there. About the only thing that had changed was some trees got really, really, big, and some got cut down, and everything got smaller. :confused:
 

I used streetview to look at the house where I was born and brought up. It looked forlorn and insignificant. I felt quite depressed and had to log off. In spite of, or perhaps because of, the area, a lot of my neighbours went on to pursue successful professional careers. There was a post-war culture which said that a good education was the key to a better life.

Earlier this year, I was in Germany and visited the area where we lived. Completely changed now with stark looking apartment blocks spring up everyhere - but the city centre still looks the same.
 
I can't even find the street where I lived while growing up. Destroyed by the huge flood in Grand Forks, No. Dakota several years ago now. The house my then-hubby and I bought in Missouri when we were just starting out ... it's still there, but the neighborhood has gone downhill. Everything changes eventually. Fact of life, I guess, but a bit sad.
 
I've had so many old neighborhoods. The one I grew up in has changed dramatically and the house is no longer there, replaced by a fancy monster house after the community was taken over by rich immigrants from Hong Kong.

My more recent old neighborhoods are pretty much still the same thank goodness. I can google most of the actual addresses and see the houses are still standing and look the same.

Going back to visit is always a strange experience, like going into another dimension. The place is there, but I feel like I'm in a movie set.
 
Cookie said:
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Going back to visit is always a strange experience, like going into another dimension. The place is there, but I feel like I'm in a movie set.
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It's usually mentally challenging to visit old places you've lived .... brings up strange feelings for sure.
 
Well, I LIVE in the house I grew up from the age of about 8. I bought it from my mother when my father died. Funny, she wanted to live there, but not own it; so I bought it and she lived there until her death. This worked out well for me (not her death, of course, but the fact that she wanted to live there) because my husband was military and we were stationed all over the place.

The neighborhood is much the same, even the neighbors. My next door neighbor moved in in about 1959, 4 years after we did, and my across the street neighbors were there before my parents bought. The neighborhood has slid a little, but not much. A few blocks to the east of me, tho, the area has sort of gone to pot.

I did go years ago out to California to try to find the rural house we lived in before we moved here, but it had been destroyed in a mud slide a few years years before that.
 
I grew up in many houses in 4 states (navy brat). I've been back to see the one where I was born, and also the one where I lived in junior and high school. On our trip to MA this Sept. two of my siblings and I will visit the cape cod style house where we lived in the late 50's.
 
I too have lived in many houses since I was born...several houses from my young childhood have gone and been replaced more than once..but from age 9 through to adulthood I lived in 2 different houses and they are both very much still there and look almost exactly as they did when I was growing up. Only difference is that there are traffic lights where there were none before (in one road).. and more traffic than back in the day on the other. Otherwise little has changed.

I was a Navy wife, so lived a transient life early in my first marriage, approx a year in each place and many different houses and parts of the country and I've looked at those houses too, and they are the ones where the areas have deteriorated badly. Apparently the Navy sold the houses to the local authorities some years after we left them, and they have since become neighbourhoods I wouldn't choose to live in now...sad, but I will always have good memories of them when they were nice.
 
Butterfly said:
Well, I LIVE in the house I grew up from the age of about 8. I bought it from my mother when my father died. Funny, she wanted to live there, but not own it; so I bought it and she lived there until her death. This worked out well for me (not her death, of course, but the fact that she wanted to live there) because my husband was military and we were stationed all over the place.

The neighborhood is much the same, even the neighbors. My next door neighbor moved in in about 1959, 4 years after we did, and my across the street neighbors were there before my parents bought. The neighborhood has slid a little, but not much. A few blocks to the east of me, tho, the area has sort of gone to pot.

I did go years ago out to California to try to find the rural house we lived in before we moved here, but it had been destroyed in a mud slide a few years years before that.
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Hi, there! If you live in Albuquerque, a little story comes to mind, because you have been there from just about the time when my parent's friend's sister and her family pulled up stakes in Chicagoland, and moved to Albuquerque. For straight-laced, immovable greenhorns of European descent, everyone concerned was astounded that Ted, the mover, would leave for such a far-away place! We could not spell, much less pronounce "Albuquerque"!

I think it was about 1951, Ted had studied electronics, worked for Sears Roebuck, repairing their products, and somehow was offered a job at Sandia Labs, I think it was. My folks corresponded with them, but never visited the West. Ted bought a house on Carlisle Blvd., about 600, or 700 (south?), I recall that because of the letters my Mother addressed. I was then 9 years old.

Many years later, 1977, my Father gone, my marriage dissolved, my Mother came out to live with me in Las Vegas, as I hoped to finish my degree requirements at UNLV. She asked if we might drive out to Albuquerque, to see Ted and Agnes, I agreed. They still lived on Carlisle, the old neighborhood, and that was of course the first time I had seen it. My Mother was then 70, Ted was well into his 70s, but spry and sharp. We went out to dinner with them, said our farewells, knowing they were to be the last. I had classes awaiting, and Vegas was a long drive back!

Today, the old folks are all gone, and I have taken their place in this existence of ours! imp
 
NancyNGA said:
Last year, with the help of Google Streetview, I looked up every place I ever lived, including some rental property. They were all still there. About the only thing that had changed was some trees got really, really, big, and some got cut down, and everything got smaller. :confused:
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Thank you Nancy, for posting this, I had never heard of it before. What fun it is :)
 
Red have you really never used Google street view before?...I've been using it for years it's one of my very favourite things on the web. :D I've been able to 'visit' my friends and family who live all over the world even tho' I may not have ever been there in the flesh. I can see what their neighbourhood is like, their schools, their church, parks etc..

Another thing I find useful is that if I'm going to drive anywhere I've never been before, as well as entering it into the sat nav..before I leave to go on the trip I look up the address on GSV, and familiarise myself with the roads or landmarks leading to my destination, just in case the sat nav has a little fit and keeps directing me left..left..left as it does sometimes.. ;) Fabulous tool GSV..bestest on the web afaic....one thing tho' for all of you who've just discovered GSV,,, bear in mind that the images are almost always between 18 months and 3 years old..occasionally older, so there may be some changes since the last google updates of the area you're viewing.
 
NancyNGA said:
Oh yeah, isn't it?! The day I discovered it I think I was up until 3am that night "driving"all over the place.
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Yeah, you can tour the world just about! I especially like to 'drive' along the coastal roads all over the world.
 

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