Episode#33: Once Upon A Time We Moved ... A Lot!

 During the first ten years of our marriage to say we moved a lot would be an understatement, in retrospect it seems we moved every time the season would change. But when you don't own much and still in your late teens and early 20s it was pretty easy. As a matter of fact, I think one time we moved one afternoon after we got off work. But when you have a house full of furniture and age 35-40 years, it becomes a lot less fun and a lot more work.

When we got married in 1975 we rented a furnished four room duplex on Haight Street in Gainesville with a monthly rent of $75. It consisted of a living room, kitchen, bedroom and bathroom. It had squeaky wooden floors and ancient appliances and the only thing we owned was a TV and our clothes. The old lady on other half of the duplex lived there during World War II while her husband was in the Army. After the war ended and he returned, she moved away with him. He died some years later and she moved back into this place and it had the same furniture that was there during WWII 😮. In the picture below you can see the old gas stove, the water heater in the corner and that awful wall paper, but all of this was a part of the adventure called adulting for these two 18 year old kids.

Here is an outside view of this duplex as it looks today. Our front door was the one on the left.

We moved out four months later and rented a studio apartment off Hwy 51 near the college called Normandy Arms. These apartments were built in the early 1970s and had avocado green shag carpet which was the rage in the early 1970s. These apartments were very nice especially after living in that decades old duplex. The rent was substantially higher than our rent at Haight Street at $160 per month, however rent included utilities and trust me when summer time came, we kept that place plenty cool. It also was pretty small with the living room and kitchen down stairs and the bedroom and bathroom upstairs. We struggled making the rent payment the first couple of months as our combined income was about $135 per week. But once I figured out to put $40 a week back, we could make rent and have money for gas and groceries with some left over. We moved out 6 months later into a mobile home owned by my grandparents and on my parents property near Callisburg. Of all the moves we have made over the years, moving out of Normandy Arms was the only one I really regretted.

The first picture below was taken when we moved there in February 1976 and a side view of Carol's 1968 Camaro

The following picture is a current picture

My grandparents bought a small two bedroom mobile home in 1971 and had it set up near my folks house. Pawpaw died in June of 1976 and shortly after his funeral Granny moved back to Denton where she lived for many years. I wanted to live back in the country and this seemed like the perfect opportunity. The payment on this trailer was only about $90 per month and we only had to pay electricity, the water came from a water well. We only lived there about 6 months then moved back to Gainesville which is only about 15 miles away but somehow it made sense to these two teenage kids. 

The two bedroom rent house we moved into was owned by Eddie Ballew who was my father in law's boss and we got it for $95 per month. I think we did this to control gas expense since we both drove to town daily for work and it was a chore for me to keep both cars running which I worked on every weekend. Plus there were washer/dryer connections at this house on Blanton street and Carol hated the laundromat. When we moved in here we had to buy a stove and fridge so we bought a matching color set washer and dryer. You can probably guess they were all avocado green. The photo below is current but it looks exactly like it did in 1977, looks like it might even be the same old roof. 😵

We lived here about 6 months (see a pattern here?) and found a house for sale back in Callisburg for only $18,500. The house was just under 1200 square feet on a half acre with three bedrooms and a carport. The house was built in 1970 so it was only about 7 years old when we bought it in May 1977. We qualified for an FHA loan which meant lower interest but longer terms at 33 years. I remember when we signed the paperwork at the title company and saw the last payment was to be made in June 2010. I couldn't even wrap my mind around 2010 and said that I would just make my last payment as I came to town in my flying car. Juvenile I know, but keep in mind I was still only 19 years old at the time. We lived here for 2 years and then sold it as I was preparing to move up career ladder with Firestone where I was the assistant store manager in Gainesville and in training for a store manager position. This picture is me cleaning our first new car which was a 1977 Monte Carlo. Note the small pine tree sampling right beside me.

The picture below is a current view and notice how big that little pine tree sapling has gotten over the years. The house has been a rent house for several years. The owners recently did some updates and just rented it for $1800 per month. That is 10% of the purchase price I paid in 1977 😬

We sold our home in 1979 and we moved into a rent house across the street from where Carol grew up so we could move as soon as that transfer came through. The picture below is a current photo of that rent house on Walter Road.

A month or so later we find that Carol is pregnant with our first baby. The opportunity to move on with Firestone had not materialized yet so 2 months later we sign a lease purchase agreement on a newer and nicer house off Kiowa Hwy thinking we would be here for some time. The call to transfer came 3 months later and I turned the offer down because it was 100 miles away and she wanted to stay with her Dr. As a result I lost that job because unknown to me, Firestone Corporate was closing the Gainesville store which is why they want me to move immediately.

Aaron was born in March of 1980 and I start getting statements from the insurance company claiming  the Firestone insurance was paying for the prenatal, delivery and hospital expenses. With this information I decided I should see about going back to work for them. I reached out to the Dallas District office and scheduled a meeting to talk about why I had quit. They understood my plight and I was reinstated as an assistant store manager in North Richland Hills (near Ft Worth). I commuted for two months before we moved to Hurst. A couple of months later I was getting updated information stating that since I had voluntarily quit, they were rejecting all insurance benefits of the pregnancy. We were not really happy living there and I had heard that a guy and his wife had reopened the Gainesville Firestone store as an independent dealer but his business was failing and was in need of experienced help to run the store. I met with him and he offered me the job so we move back to Gainesville in September of that year.

We moved to a small rent house on north Fair Ave. He was right, his business was indeed failing and failing  faster than he thought and three months later, just after Christmas he had to close the store and I am out of a job again. I heard of an opening at the local concrete company needing a welder. I had worked at an ornamental iron shop for a couple of years after high school, but I had never welded on heavy equipment or  structural fabrication but needed a job and I applied. Fortunately I got the job and ultimately worked there for just over 28 years. The picture below is a current view of that house on Fair.

 

We stayed in this house until the following spring when we moved to a much nicer house on Rosedale Street owned by our previous landlord Eddie Ballew and got the house for $325 per month. We really liked this house and we were there when our second baby was born in 1983. We had to move when the bank took many if not all of Eddie's rent houses in 1985. We had the option to buy it but I could not afford the payments which would have been double our rent. After looking for another rent house, we could not find anything and decided our best option was to buy a mobile home. That year I bought a small 3 bedroom, 2 bathroom single wide mobile home and had it delivered to Sunset Village trailer park in Gainesville. This is a current picture of the house on Rosedale.

We lived in that mobile home park until spring 1989 when I bought two acres just outside of town in the community of Woodbine. I paid to have the home moved and we were there until May 1993. Both Brad and Jacob were born while we lived there. I sold the property and had the home moved about 7 miles east to County Road 107 to an eleven acre parcel of land (see Episode #9 for that whole adventure) that my parents bought the year before and where they lived in a double wide mobile home. In 1996 I sold this eleven year old single wide and bought a nice double wide and had it set it up in the same location as the single wide home. We lived at this address for 14 years.

In January 2007 my dad passed away and with my mom living in Whitesboro, I sold the place in June and we moved to the house in Callisburg on Big Indian Road where we now live. As of last July we have been here for 17 years. I have likely moved us for the last time, I am now 67 years old and will likely pay someone to do all of the heavy lifting next time we move.

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