Saturday, April 17, 2010

THEIR CHILDHOOD HOMES ARE GONE!

This first picture is for Kevin and Joe and Justin.  A Grand Forks Air Force Base Prairie Dog!
We picked Lenny, Connie and Sammy up for breakfast, and Sammy was going to make one of his famous cheesy faces, but I caught it as a cute wink!
So the following pictures are for my kids......This first one is of our house on Sunflake Circle!  It's gone!  It was a two story 6-plex, brand new when we moved in back in the late 70's.  They have torn it down!  Just when they got some trees to grow they tore it down!  The brown box was in our back yard.
Mickey, Rhonda, Katie and Chrisy lived here. 
Lenny is explaining to Connie how he and Lance used to play trucks right over there, and Keith lived there, and Twin and Slurp lived over there, and Prey's lived over there.  It's all gone.  My kids' childhood homes are gone!
So then we took a ride to the other part of the base housing to take pictures of Teak Ave.  Well, here it is.
I'm standing on J Street, at the corner of Spruce and J.  The next street, which would be somewhere in this area was Teak where we lived when we first arrived on base.  Gone, too. 
Twining school where I worked and the kids attended, gone too.  Completely gone!
I think this is about where the corner was where Barbie lived, and the open area was behind our buildings.  It's all gone.
This is Spruce Street where Lori M. lived.  It's now the last street heading towards the north.
Then we went to Turtle River for a picnic.  This is Ernie, Lenny and Sammy posing for a three generation picture.
Sammy collected some treasures down by the river.  Here he has claws from a crayfish.
And here are all his treasures.  Don't boys have fun collecting treasures from a park, woods, or river?  We had a really nice day, and as we dropped them off we made plans to pick them up for church in the morning.

6 comments:

Linda said...

Why is everything gone? Were you aware of this before you arrived? Kind of sad, huh.

Marge said...

The base is much smaller in size "people wise" so they don't need all the housing anymore. They actually built some lovely duplexes, too, so there are new housing areas. Nope, we didn't know that everything was gone. It really is sad, we had a lot of memories tied up in those homes.

Kari said...

Darn. I thought they had made some kind of shrine to my teenage years at the Sunflake Circle house.

I cracked up when you mentioned Twin and Slurp. I haven't thought of them in years! Hope you're having fun! ~Kari

Barbie said...

Thanks for posting the pics, Marge. I'll be sure to show them to Mom. We lived in the building right across the street from Twining. So sad! Thanks again! Safe travels!

Mom in MN said...

Wow -- thank you for the trip down memory lane! I had no idea they'd taken so many houses out. Last I knew they'd removed a lot of the "relocatables". I remember going to town with your family in 1979 to do the sandbagging! Thanks for the picture of Spruce Ave. -- was that taken from J Street or I Street? If it's J Street, then that's my old house there! (1308C) Lenny really looks the same! Thanks again for the pictures!

Lisa said...

So they are taking the older homes all down to build new ones? I bet that was pretty hard to go there and see that everything during that time period was gone. But yet you have lots of wonderful memories! Miss you.