403 2nd Ave. So.

It's funny how you many live a few houses during the years you are growing up but only one usually is the one you consider "home". For me it is 403 2nd. Ave. So. where we lived from the time I was 4 years old until I was 14. When my parents bought the house it was already almost 100 years old. It was then 1954. It was a wonderful old house with 4 bedrooms and a bath and a half. It had a bannister we took every opportunity to slide down. It had a screened in front porch we spent many hours on. An old "Michigan" basement with a coal bin and a room to put preserves in. But more than just the house was the wonderful neighborhood filled with kids to play with and a block to the big park and beach and Lake Michigan.
Across the street was a city diamond shaped small park where baseball was played and a ice rink was maintained by the city in the winter months. Many hours were spent on it in all seasons.
We spent hours playing kick the can in our paved alley, rode our bikes (double sometimes) all over kingdom come, organized our own parades down the "tar" in the middle of the street, camped out in the backyard, picked green apples out of old lady Hessel's apple tree and ate them w/salt under the street lights, skated for hours both girls and boys playing crack the whip, and those are only some of the good things we did. The list goes on and on. But around it all is this house, our house that we always ran home to when the street lights came on and where in the morning we'd often wake up to the fog horn going off in the harbor. It's sights and sounds and smells are never really gone from my memory and I'm sure you all have a "home" like this too!