We did buy our first home on North 36th
Street, in what was known as the Fremont area, in early 1969. Here is what that house looked like in approximately 2019 (Thanks, Google Maps):
And, here is what it looked like in 1937,
according to the Fremont Historical Society:
I have no idea who Denny + Hoyt’s refers
to, but I did see that caption on some other photos located on the web site for
the Fremont Area Historical Organisation.
And, finally, this is the only photo of it from our time there. That is Blanca standing on the little porch
(you can see the overspray from the paint job we - Mike, David, and I- did) :
After a short 14 months or so in Seattle,
we decided – literally overnight – to move to El Paso, mostly because Blanca’s
parents arrived mysteriously for a visit, the very day after I had gotten fed
up and quit my job at Boeing. It just
seemed somehow convenient to have their assistance with loading our things into
a U-Haul, and to make the drive back down to Texas. (Yes, there is another story here, but I
think I’ll save it for the novel).
El Paso was a struggle at first, but we did
manage to find work, and even were able to buy a house within about three
months of our arrival. The struggle
continued from 1970, until a friend prevailed upon me to finally use my head
for something besides a hat rack (“Use the GI Bill, fool, before it’s too
late!” he said). We already had two
children when I started college, and by the time Blanca finished her
university, we had four. We spent many
years on the brink of disaster, living from paycheck to paycheck, never seeming
to get ahead.
All of the above having been said, I am
reminded that this was supposed to be a more positive piece, uplifting, as it
were, as compared to what I usually write.
So, to get back on track, let’s focus on some of those more positive
things. Eventually, as the kids grew up,
our careers advanced, and we not only made plans for our eventual retirement,
and (despite some adjustments along the way) we ultimately reached a point
where we felt we could end our working lives, and begin our new life here in
Costa Rica.
This is not to say that our lives begin and
end here in paradise, because we certainly have many fond memories of people
and places.
We had many great times while living in El
Paso’s lower valley (8153 Valley View) where all the kids were born, and
launched on their educational paths. We
lived there for some sixteen years, and these are just a few of the
highlights: Arthur, the oldest, was born
in 1971, started Head Start, and attended Pasodale Elementary, Ysleta Junior
High, and Ysleta High School – we moved from this address in about 1986, when
he was going into his junior or senior year of high school. John, Jr., was born in 1973, and followed the
same path, with the possible exception that he may have missed Ysleta Junior
High (correct me if I’m wrong, John).
Both of them were able to graduate from Ysleta High School. Blanca, Jr., our darling daughter, was born
in 1977, and was able to graduate from Ysleta, but had to go a year or two to
other schools (one year in the Socorro District, and another year of Junior
High with her cousin, Melissa). Andrew,
the baby, was born in 1979, and started school in Ysleta, but switched to
Socorro District when we moved to the edge of El Paso, very close to Socorro,
in 1986. He did attend Ysleta High
School, like his siblings, but graduated from Hanks High School.
We moved from the Ysleta area, to the very
edge of the city of El Paso, almost to the town of Socorro (we found ourselves
located about three houses from the city limits, on Moses Drive) in 1986. We had decided it was time to move when our
home was burglarized while on one of many trips to Mexico (Chihuahua) over
Easter Weekend in, I believe 1986. This
new neighborhood was a very different kind of neighborhood, with the homes on
our block being owner occupied, mostly owner-built, but we were surrounded by
lower class developments, and two street gangs (Los Ortiz Bros and La F Troop). This was a fantastic home, with some 2400 sq.
ft., four bedrooms, two and a half bathrooms, a living room, a den, and a room
that had been converted from what was originally intended to be a garage, into
a play room, and a huge yard. We had a
pool table there, with a wet bar and a beer fridge (that actually stayed with
me from Valley View, up until we moved to Dallas many years later; here’s
another side story. I bought it used
from Bertha, Blanca’s sister. It started
life as one of those milk dispenser fridges you see on the back counter at a
diner, like Denny’s. It is still working
today, in the garage at Bucko’s house in Austin. I foolishly gave it to him while we were in
Dallas because I bought a new, slightly bigger fridge that I then sold before
we moved here. I shoulda kept it). We’re off to Pt. VIV…..
The time spent there (on Moses) was,
overall, very good to us, but it was marked by a frequent sound of actual
gunshots, followed by the sirens of the police and ambulances, and accompanied
by the police helicopter, with high intensity searchlight sweeping the night
sky looking for whatever gang members were responsible for the latest violence.
Oddly enough, we only had one incident
while living there, where a thief from Mexico came into our yard, took clothes
off the clotheslines, and stole a stereo from my brother-in-law’s motor home
that had been parked in our driveway.
What made this even more odd was that Blanca happened to get up early
that morning (a Sunday, I think), and had gone into the yard, maybe to bring in
the clothes, and encountered the thief, carrying a bag and some sort of
implement in his hands (maybe bolt cutters).
They were both so startled that neither reacted in a manner one might
expect. Blanca told the guy, in Spanish,
that he was on private property, and walked him out the front gate, and he
left. Then, we discovered that some
things were missing. The clothes were
found on the ground near the back fence, as if he had moved them there to pick
up later. The gap in the dashboard of
the motor home (where the stereo used to be) was not noticed until sometime later.
So, we’ll leave you now, while the hunt for
the thief continues………..
