Home sweet home

This is a photo of the house that I grew up in Strongsville, Ohio. My brother Mike and sister-in-law Tammie took this photo just a week or so ago when they detoured off the Ohio Turnpike on their way back to Michigan from Philadelphia. While the town of Strongsville has dramatically changed, according to Mike, our old neighborhood looks much the same as it did when we were children.

My parents lived there for many years, certainly long enough to pay off a thirty year mortgage. It's the house I was brought home to from the hospital - my room was in the front right corner. From the outside, it looks pretty much as I remember it.

By today's standards, it is a very modest house. It had three bedrooms, 1.5 bathrooms and a galley-style kitchen. Although it had a full basement with half of it turned out in the common style of the 1970s as a "rec" room, there was no guest room, no bonus room, no play room. Yet I never thought of the house as being small. The family that lived next door to us for all those years raised six children in a house with the same overall footprint as ours and, again, no one ever thought of the houses as being small. They were the average size.

It was a good neighborhood in which to grow up. Just about every house had children and we all played together, sometimes well and sometimes not. We pretended our bikes were horses, we built forts, we climbed (and fell out of) trees. We caught lightning bugs and put them in jars, we played elaborate games of hide and seek, we tagged after the big kids until they chased us away. And if I got in trouble at the Knoblauch's house, then I was definitely in trouble at home.

But it wasn't all good; as an adult I have learned that the man across the street beat his children and his wife, that the man on the other side from the family with six children "ran around", that the family around the corner had a child that ended up in drug rehab. I don't know if my parents were aware of all this or not, that perhaps they simply kept a lot of information from me. Either way, I don't much care...I can honestly say that I had an idyllic childhood that was mostly free of anxiety and fear.

I have many good memories of the house in Strongsville. But I think I am glad that I don't live nearby and therefore can't see the changes another family has made or to see the overall changes in the neighborhood. In my mind, it will always be just the way I remember it.