Ed Yourdon
Our house in Ft. Worth - spring 1951
Mom has written on this album page, "Marion, Patty, Packard, House & Bike, 6336 Malvey Street," which was in Ft. Worth, Texas.
Mom and Patrice are on the extreme left side of the photo...
I think the car that you see in the garage was actually a Studebaker, but I have no memory of it.
And I think I got the bike shortly after we moved into this house -- on my 7th birthday, at the end of April. That being the case, I've dated the photo for May 1, 1951 because Mom put no date on this album page.
*********************************
Some of the photos in this album are “originals” from the brief 7-week period that my family spent in Ft. Wort, TX in the spring of 1951 — i.e., the period before Omaha,Riverside, Roswell, and Denver (which you may have seen already in my Flickr archives). I went back nearly 40 years later, as part of some research that I was doing for a novel called Do-Overs, the beginning of which can be found here on my website
www.yourdon.com/personal/fiction/doovers/index.html
and the relevant chapter (concerning Denver) can be found here:
www.yourdon.com/personal/fiction/doovers/chapters/ch5.html
Before I get into the details, let me make a strong request — if you’re looking at these photos, and if you are getting any enjoyment at all of this brief look at some mundane Americana from 60+ years ago: find a similar episode in your own life, and write it down. Gather the pictures, clean them up, and upload them somewhere on the Internet where they can be found. Trust me: there will come a day when the only person on the planet who actually experienced those events is you. Your own memories may be fuzzy and incomplete; but they will be invaluable to your friends and family members, and to many generations of your descendants.
Actually, I should listen to my own advice: unlike my subsequent visits to Roswell, Riverside, and Omaha I did not take any photos when I tracked down my old homes from the 1951 period in Ft. Worth, nor the subsequent 1952-53 period in Denver.
While most of our residential occupancies lasted a full year, the period in Ft. Worth lasted for roughly two months — at the end of which, Dad was transferred by his employer up to Denver. I have no idea why this happened; and since my parents have now passed away, there’s really nobody I can ask at this point...
So, what do I remember about the two months that I spent in Ft. Worth? Hardly anything at the moment, though perhaps more details will occur to me in the days to come — and I’ll add them to these notes, along with additional photos that I’m tweaking and editing now.
For now, here is a random list of things I remember:
1. It took several days for our family to drive from our previous location (outside NYC, in Long Island) down to Texas; I only remember that my parents sat in the front seat with my baby sister (who was only about six months old at the time), and I sat in the back seat, staring out at highways and scenery as we drove down through Appalachia and the American Southeast.
2. We moved into a rented house, but I have no memory of how long it took, or even what neighborhood it was in.
I do remember Ft. Worth being the first of several subsequent cities where my parents said to me, “You’ll be going to school at the XYZ school, and you can walk there by going down this street, and then that street, and then that street … so walk on down there tomorrow morning, and sign yourself in.” They didn’t take me to school on the first day to make sure I was enrolled or registered; it was just assumed that I could do it myself. Maybe that was normal back in the 1950s; maybe it’s still normal today, in some parts of the country. But in big cities today, I think most parents would be horrified.
3. I got my first bicycle in Ft. Worth — and I remember it being presented to me as a birthday present for my 7th birthday; you’ll see a picture of it in the front yard in the last photo in this set. I don’t think I had ever tried to ride a bike before, but everyone assumed that it would come quickly and easily. And it did ...
Our house in Ft. Worth - spring 1951
Mom has written on this album page, "Marion, Patty, Packard, House & Bike, 6336 Malvey Street," which was in Ft. Worth, Texas.
Mom and Patrice are on the extreme left side of the photo...
I think the car that you see in the garage was actually a Studebaker, but I have no memory of it.
And I think I got the bike shortly after we moved into this house -- on my 7th birthday, at the end of April. That being the case, I've dated the photo for May 1, 1951 because Mom put no date on this album page.
*********************************
Some of the photos in this album are “originals” from the brief 7-week period that my family spent in Ft. Wort, TX in the spring of 1951 — i.e., the period before Omaha,Riverside, Roswell, and Denver (which you may have seen already in my Flickr archives). I went back nearly 40 years later, as part of some research that I was doing for a novel called Do-Overs, the beginning of which can be found here on my website
www.yourdon.com/personal/fiction/doovers/index.html
and the relevant chapter (concerning Denver) can be found here:
www.yourdon.com/personal/fiction/doovers/chapters/ch5.html
Before I get into the details, let me make a strong request — if you’re looking at these photos, and if you are getting any enjoyment at all of this brief look at some mundane Americana from 60+ years ago: find a similar episode in your own life, and write it down. Gather the pictures, clean them up, and upload them somewhere on the Internet where they can be found. Trust me: there will come a day when the only person on the planet who actually experienced those events is you. Your own memories may be fuzzy and incomplete; but they will be invaluable to your friends and family members, and to many generations of your descendants.
Actually, I should listen to my own advice: unlike my subsequent visits to Roswell, Riverside, and Omaha I did not take any photos when I tracked down my old homes from the 1951 period in Ft. Worth, nor the subsequent 1952-53 period in Denver.
While most of our residential occupancies lasted a full year, the period in Ft. Worth lasted for roughly two months — at the end of which, Dad was transferred by his employer up to Denver. I have no idea why this happened; and since my parents have now passed away, there’s really nobody I can ask at this point...
So, what do I remember about the two months that I spent in Ft. Worth? Hardly anything at the moment, though perhaps more details will occur to me in the days to come — and I’ll add them to these notes, along with additional photos that I’m tweaking and editing now.
For now, here is a random list of things I remember:
1. It took several days for our family to drive from our previous location (outside NYC, in Long Island) down to Texas; I only remember that my parents sat in the front seat with my baby sister (who was only about six months old at the time), and I sat in the back seat, staring out at highways and scenery as we drove down through Appalachia and the American Southeast.
2. We moved into a rented house, but I have no memory of how long it took, or even what neighborhood it was in.
I do remember Ft. Worth being the first of several subsequent cities where my parents said to me, “You’ll be going to school at the XYZ school, and you can walk there by going down this street, and then that street, and then that street … so walk on down there tomorrow morning, and sign yourself in.” They didn’t take me to school on the first day to make sure I was enrolled or registered; it was just assumed that I could do it myself. Maybe that was normal back in the 1950s; maybe it’s still normal today, in some parts of the country. But in big cities today, I think most parents would be horrified.
3. I got my first bicycle in Ft. Worth — and I remember it being presented to me as a birthday present for my 7th birthday; you’ll see a picture of it in the front yard in the last photo in this set. I don’t think I had ever tried to ride a bike before, but everyone assumed that it would come quickly and easily. And it did ...