Since this post is to reference my "early years," there aren't a lot of places to tell about, but there is plenty to tell about them. I lived in exactly two houses before I left home for college. I don't have access to my pictures of either house right now, but at some future date, I'll add photos of them to this post.
My first home was one built by my great-grandfather William Haag, my maternal grandmother's father. I never really heard it said, but I'm of the impression that the Haag family was fairly well off, at least prior to the depression.While I know Grandma (Haag) Hill was raised on a farm, at some point they moved into "town" (Aurora) and great-grandpa Haag began building houses. They were multiple family dwellings and whether they were built with the intent of income as rental units or to keep the family close together, I'm unsure.
There is a great deal of history behind the houses at 415 and 425 North Avenue and 450 S 4th Street in Aurora, but for the purpose of this post, I'm to focus on the one I lived in.
When I was born, my family was living in the 4th Street house. It was about 3 blocks from Copley Hospital where I was born and my mother walked there. The 4th Street house was a huge 2-story building with one upper and one lower flat, a full basement and a walk up attic that went the full length of the house. Each floor had an entryway, a living room, dining room, kitchen, bathroom, 2 bedrooms, a sun porch off the kitchen and a huge front porch off the entryway. The house had beautiful oak cabinets, flooring and trim. Each level also had a gorgeous colonnade. On the lower floor, it separated the living room from the dining room; on the upper floor it separated the entry from the living room. The upper flat also had an oak staircase that went down to the lower front porch.
For my first few years, I slept in my parents' room of the lower flat and my brothers had the second bedroom. I'm guessing I was around 4 or 5 when my dad did some remodeling and turned the back porch into a bedroom for my brothers and I moved into their old room. While doing the remodel on the main floor, he added a cement block foundation under the boys' room and knocked out a "doorway" into the original basement. That new room in the basement became the "train room." My brothers had a huge train set with buildings and "trees" to create a whole community. You had to crawl under the table to get to the middle operating section of the train. I don't remember ever being allowed to run the train, but I remember enjoying being with my brothers while they did. The steam engine and the hand car were especially fascinating to me.
Before the remodel, we had a good-sized fenced in backyard with a big old tree, my swing set and a bunny hutch. My brothers had a couple of rabbits: Copper and Snowball. One day, they found Copper dead in the hutch with a bee bee in her head. Someone had purposely shot her. They suspected it was the ornery neighbor boys, but there was no proof. Snowball was donated to the Phillips Park Zoo shortly thereafter and the following year a visit to the zoo had a large number of pure white rabbits hopping around! In addition to the tame rabbits in our yard, we had a squirrel named Skippy. Why Skippy? Because I could take a Skippy peanut butter sandwich out to the yard, put it in the tree and then step back and watch as Skippy came to eat it.
Another phase of remodeling at the 4th Street house involved tearing down the old 1 car garage and replacing it with a 3-car garage where the backyard used to be and pouring a large driveway from the alley to the garage. (That driveway is where I learned to ride my bike.) Now there was plenty of parking available for both apartments.
I also remember being in elementary school and noticing a hole in the dining room wall that was about 2" in diameter. I asked my mother why there was a hole in our wall and she told me that I had done it. I was appalled! I couldn't imagine that I would have done anything to create a hole...she must have been mistaken! Then she told me the story. Apparently, when I was still in my walker, I had gotten hold of a spoon in the kitchen. As I've mentioned before, I was a quiet child and by the time my mother came looking for me, the damage was done. She caught me with my feet propped up on the wall, sitting on the seat of my walker and digging away at the plaster with the spoon. Since my dad was a carpenter by trade, I know it would have been an easy fix, so I'm not really certain why the hole was still there years later, unless it was to just be able to show me what I had done and tell me the story of it later!
My dad always wanted to return to farming; to have a farm of his own and when I was in 2nd grade, he bought a farm in Watertown, Wisconsin. The farm was still owned by the original family, the Mullens who also owned the dairy in town. Dad and Al moved to Wisconsin right away to start to build the herd of cows and to do the spring planting. Mom stayed behind with Bill and me as Bill was finishing his senior year of high school. Weekend trips were the norm until school got out and we moved north to join Dad and Al.
The house on the 160-acre farm was a cape cod style house that replaced the original old farmhouse that was destroyed in a fire. The front porch of the house was still from the original house and a partial wall around the back patio was also a wall of the old house. The patio was actually poured over all the remnants and debris of the fire. The house had a living room, kitchen, 2 bedrooms and a bath on the first floor with 2 bedrooms and three small walk-in attic spaces off the bedrooms upstairs. I claimed the largest of the attic spaces to be my Barbie room. It had the two windows from the front of the house for some natural light and was off my walk-in closet.
We had a huge barn, with a great hay mow and grain bins. The hay mow was complete with generations of bats that gave my brothers and dad plenty of opportunities for target practice with the "22." The barn had an electric barn cleaner for the manure, 3 pens for calves and a stinky silo that had the most amazing echo! My sister-in-law, Marcia, recently told me that the barn has been torn down. Other buildings on the farm were a large tool shed (large enough to store the tractors), a couple of corn cribs, a chicken coop and brooder house, and a hog barn. The barnyard was surrounded on three sides by the barn, the hog barn and the chicken coop/brooder house/garage. There was a small pasture behind the hog barn for the pigs and ponies and a large pasture a ways from all the buildings, surrounded by the fields. The pasture area wasn't suitable for growing anything except grass as the soil there was boggy and it housed a knoll that my mother swore was an Indian burial ground.
My dad planted alfalfa, oats and field corn and we usually had about 40-50 head of cattle. I had my own Ayrshire cow named Ada. She was a homely thing; actually mixed Ayrshire and Holstein. She gave me my baby bull, Bambi who my dad told me he had sold. I was distraught the day I learned we were eating him, but in retrospect, he was some pretty good eating. Dad was patient with me and let me name a lot of the calves that were born; most memorable being Valentine (born on Valentine's Day, of course) and Venus, just 2 days younger than Valentine. I only remember one pig's name: Skunk. Not exactly sure why my dad named him that. It's not like one pig smelled any worse than another...
I got to host a Halloween party two of the four Halloweens we lived in Wisconsin. I invited all the kids from my class in school and played all the typical games like bobbing for apples with a grand finale of a hay ride. That was a lot of fun until my brother got annoyed with one of the girls who kept horsing around on the wagon so he hung her upside down by the feet off the back of the wagon!
Friends from Illinois always came to visit for a weekend, since we were just 2 hours away from Aurora.And some of our friends would come stay for a week or more. One of my brother's friends, Steve would spend the whole summer with us! His dad was our milkman in Aurora and since "Oleo" (margarine) was illegal to sell in the "dairy state," he would bring the contraband for my mother to put in our freezer whenever they came to visit.
The last couple of years we were in Wisconsin, Dad gradually got away from the dairy/livestock and focused on crops. He purchased a combine and a sprayer and hired himself out to spray and then harvest crops for other farmers in the area.
I loved living on the farm; being surrounded by animals and fresh air. I cried myself to sleep the night I found out my parents had sold the farm, 2 days before my 12th birthday. Grandma Hill had Alzheimer's and had passed away about a year before and DeeDee was having a hard time taking care of Grandpa and all the rental properties alone. So, back to Aurora we went.
Back to the same house. Although, this time we lived in the upstairs flat as my brother Al and his wife Marcia were living in the lower unit. Shortly after moving in, Dad began to remodel the small upstairs kitchen. He tore out all the old original oak cabinets as well as the wall to the sun porch. The porch became a dining nook and he ordered all new modern kitchen cabinetry with built in stainless steel appliances. He also carpeted the back stairs with a new phenomena: indoor/outdoor carpeting!!! Each floor also got a new remodeled bathroom which, sadly, meant the removal of the claw-foot bathtubs on each floor. The upstairs front porch was a great place to spend a hot summer night and with the security/privacy it offered, was a great place to sleep on those really hot nights.
Living back in the same house with Al, gave me opportunities to "play" with my big brother again; all the games he made up with balloons or kicking a tennis ball through the holes in the block on the front porch. It was great having Marcia there too. She was the big sister I never had and she always treated me well. Their children were born there, Gail, literally, was born in the house and I loved being able to run downstairs to see my niece and nephew or hear them coming up the back steps on a Saturday morning yelling for me to make them breakfast!
I truly loved that house. I loved the memories and I loved the tradition. I never returned "home" anymore after my dad died. Al had gotten divorced and lived there with his new wife, Ellen, Dad was gone and it just didn't feel like home anymore. We sold the house in 1980 when I was living in Utah, Al was in Florida and Bill was in Michigan. It just didn't make sense to hold on to it with no one there to take care of it or appreciate it. Whenever I have the opportunity to return to Aurora for a visit, though, it always includes a drive by the old 4th Street house where I shed a tear or two as I remember my life there and the rich family heritage that went with it.
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