A Little Trip Down Memory Lane

Today, Wyatt and I were filming an interview with a couple who live just down the street from the first house I lived in when we moved to Missouri.  After filming, we did a drive-by.

I had just turned thirteen the summer of 1980 when we left Michigan and moved to St. Louis – and as a thirteen year old, I was not at all happy about leaving my friends, having to start at a new school, and being a teenager, all at the same time.

Once we arrived and got settled, it turned out to be a good thing. Our house was close enough to the mall that we could ride our bikes to the video game arcade, and we lived in a neighborhood with a LOT of houses, so despite it being summer, we made friends pretty quickly.

The house was an odd layout.  First, it was shaped like a barn (well, two barns) and the smaller of the barns was supposed to be the garage, however, our house had originally been a model home and the real estate agents had set up an office in the garage. So, we had this “Big Room” that ultimately became the room that we kids took over.

Although we did not live in that house for very long, it was interesting how many memories came back to me as Wyatt and I drove through the neighborhood, and he indulged me by detouring by the house so I could get some pictures.

I remember riding my bike over to Heather’s house (uphill, both ways!). I remember playing tag football with the boys in the backyard.  Babysitting Abby, Noel and Christian next door. Waiting at the bus stop.  Hanging out with Kris down the street, and talking about the boys in the neighborhood (then meeting the boys in the neighborhood). My brothers and I creating a fully carpeted fort in the crawlspace under the stairs. The pop-open cassette player that we had in the ‘fort’ where we listened to “Paradise Theatre” and “Hi Infidelity” over and over and over (that is the soundtrack for my thirteenth year). My brother’s train set that took over the ping pong table in the ‘Big Room’ in our house. Creating rocketships with the large moving boxes.  Learning that when a neighbor kid offers you a ‘soda,’ they don’t mean pop with ice cream in it.  Learning what the words “Preppie” and “soc” and “Izod” meant. I remember being in the downstairs TV room and watching the news of President Reagan being shot. I also remember being in that same room watching Channel 11’s marathon of “The Deer Hunter” with my brother Dean (neither of us, by the way, were really old enough to watch that film and the song “Can’t Take My Eyes Off You” still gives me the willies!!)  I also remember the last physical fight I ever got into with my older brother Brendon, who despite being shorter than me, suddenly was a lot stronger than me..!

Funny, the things you remember when you start to think about a specific house you lived in. And as much as I did not want to move away from Michigan, the memories from this first Missouri house are really quite good!