Some Of My Things Part 9

The House Plan 

This was the floor plan of our first home in America. My father secured enough money from the sale of his business and the sale of our house in Germany to buy a house in Salt Lake City. It was a renovated home with three apartments and basement. 

The upstairs was rented to an older Japanese man named Mr. Ito when my father closed on the property and we agreed to continue to rent to him. He was quiet and made the most interesting food, the smell wafting down the stairs. I often played paper dolls on the first landing of the stairs and imagined them as Japanese geishas.

Entry to the two main floor apartments was from the large front porch. It was partially enclosed and provided a place for street gazing and eating when the weather allowed. My mother often prepared lunch and served it on the porch.

The apartment on the east side was rented to my married brother. They had three children while living there and my niece and nephews became more like my siblings. The oldest, my niece, was only four years younger. As they got bigger I was always eager to play with them after school. My sister-in-law had to make boundaries around when I could come over.

Our apartment had two bedrooms, a bath, kitchen, living room and partially open den. The living room windows on the east side faced a large apartment building and kept the sun from shining in directly. My piano was on the south side of the living room just inside the entrance. It occurs to me now that everyone in the building would have been forced to listen to me practice, not just my mother who regularly sat down to listen.

The kitchen was always busy. My mother cooked for my father, two teenage boys, and myself. There was a heater vent on the east wall, just by the door to the bathroom, where I hunkered down each morning to get warm. My mother would have to pry me away to get dressed.

My room was a bright, cheery room with two large windows facing the backyard. I talked my parents into a white corner desk which I loved. My bed had Federdecken, a down bedcover, for winter and a cotton comforter for summer. There was a floor electric heater between my room and my parents. It was dangerously hot to walk on which I learned never to do. Staying warm was very important to me then, as it is still now.

I played outdoors a lot. One activity I loved in the early fall was gathering chestnuts from the two trees in front of the house. When they were fresh out of their pods they were shiny and cool. I collected them in tins and stored them under my bed, much to my mother's chagrin.

We moved to the suburbs when I was twelve but I have such fond memories from this first home. My street had a store and church on the east side and my school was two blocks west. It was a place for many immigrants. My friends were Black, Chinese, and Japanese, as well as white, they spoke different languages so my German speaking seemed more common than not. Many of us spoke English in school and our native language at school and church. I was certainly more odd as we moved outside of the city. There I was in a predominately white world where everyone spoke English. But, that's another story.