Judy's old homesteads

Recently our son and his wife, Boyd and Lisa, visited Aurora, Illinois, where I lived the first ten years of my life and one other year when I was about 30 years old and the mother of four. The house below is on Lancaster Avenue, across from Greenman School. The children and I lived here when Glen was overseas while in the Air Force. We bought the house from my aunt and uncle who had lived in it most of their married life.

Below on the right, we think, is the house on Charles Street where we lived when I was born a few years ago (in the forties). When my mother, father, and brother, Owen, lived there the house did not have the large front addition that it now has. It was a tiny house with only two bedrooms. We moved to Fordham Avenue when I was five years old.

This two story house is where we moved when I was five years old until we moved to Newark, Illinois, when I had just turned ten years old. I remember many fun times while we lived here in part because I had two best friends on that block, both named Mary. Another life-changing event was the addition of a baby sister, Jan, just months after we moved. Her anticipated arrival was most likely the reason we moved into a larger house.

We lived in the lower level. The door on the right side leads to an upstairs apartment. Dad had put limestone slabs across the front of the house to make two raised flower beds. Now they are gone, but only recently. The big tree on the right is a spruce tree whose branches used to touch the ground. My fondest memories were eating grapes and pears that grew in the back yard as well as swinging on the tire swing after picking flowers off the hollyhock plants. My least favorite memory might be watching the chickens after my mom cut off their heads in the backyard. She was an old farm girl, after all. I always wondered what happened to that old turkey gobbler that we were hand feeding in the cage in the garage. After Thanksgiving, we couldn't find him!