John's Life

I was born in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, and lived in the suburb of Swissvale, just east of Pittsburgh along the Monongahela river.

This is the first house that I remember, and the one in which I lived the most while in Pittsburgh. It is located on 7706 Westmoreland Avenue. My parents lived in a house on Cannon Street when I was born, but apparently moved right after that.

There was a small tree to the right of the steps leading up from the street in which we used to climb. I remember a Swissvale police car stopping in front of the house, and the officer telling me to get down out of the tree. I don't think that stopped me from climbing in the tree - I just looked for police cars first. There was also no statue of Mary in the yard when we lived there, and there was a line of bushes along the sidwalk.

When you return to someplace that you lived as a child, you are amazed at how small everything has become.

This is looking up Westmoreland Avenue. Coming back, I was amazed at how narrow the street was, and wonder how we could park cars down one side and have room for cars and busses to pass in the street. The house is to the right.

You'll have to excuse pictures from bad angles and glare from windows. I took the pictures quickly from the car, so people wouldn't wonder who this stranger was taking pictures of their houses. My mother gets that all the time. But then, she is a housing appraiser, and can show a license.

This was my Grandma and Grandpa Henderson's house at 7705 Cannon. Their house was directly behind ours on Westmoreland, and we could just climb a short wall in our backyard to get into theirs.

Grandma's house was neat because she had air conditioning. Also, there were always Chips-a-Hoy cookies on the top shelf in the closet. My brother and I would have to stack the Pittsburgh yellow pages and white pages to reach the cookies. Grandma baked Chips-a-Hoy cookies.

This was my elementary school, Newmyer, where I went from Kindergarten through 5th grade. Since we moved away, there was a consolidation of school systems, and the small neighborhood schools were closed. I'm not exactly sure what Newmyer is now in the picture, but I suspect it is some kind of senior's center.

When I went to school there, cars did not park where you see them on the playground.

I used to imagine that I would get my pilot's license, and land on the playground. I look at it now, and don't know that I could turn a Cessna 172 around on the ground in the playground. I did launch some rockets here, though.

We buried a time capsule one year under home plate painted in one corner of the playground. I wonder if it is still there.

This was our house at 2112 Delaware. This house seemed HUGE when we moved into it. We only lived there about a year, though, before we were transferred to Birmingham, so I never felt like we really settled into it. It was one block from school. In fifth grade, I was on flag detail. Once we took the flag down at the end of the day, we could leave. I could get home, get my bike, and ride back to school before the other students got out. I could gloat that I was already out of school playing as the other students marched out of the playground.

This is the view in front of my Grandma Hilgenberg's house on Miriam Street, which used to be great-grandma and great-grandpa Day's house. My grandmother (my mother's mother) was one of their seven children. (If this is wrong, my sister or mother will correct me.) They all grew up in this house (which I had a picture of, but don't know where it is at the moment.) I took this picture because many of the family pictures over the decades were taken with this background.

This is "the farm." It belongs to uncle James and Aunt Ruth. They are actually my mother's aunt and uncle. James is my grandmother's brother. All the descendents from the Days had the big fourth of July picnic here every year. Growing up, it was one of the big events we looked forward to every year.

The farm is near Blairsville, Pennsylvania, about 50 miles east of Pittsburgh.

I think the biggest thing my brother and I would look farward to is getting to go swimming. We couldn't wait to get to the farm and swim in the pond. Back then, the pond was approximately the size of the Atlantic Ocean. I look at that mucky little pond now, and think that we must have been really deprived of decent swimming places while growing up.

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