My Old Neighborhood

Sally sent a clipping from the Fort Worth Star-Telegram telling about a house tour of the Fairmont Neighborhood.  It is an officially labeled “Historic District”. 

My family lived in that neighborhood when I was a child.  Our neighbors, living in small, old frame houses, were working-class families just scraping by during the Great Depression.  My father was lucky; he had a job making $100 a month at the bank.  Our next door neighbor worked for the W.P.A.  (Works Progress Administration), a government project providing jobs for the poor.

The neighborhood was shabby then, it became worse later.  As times got better, residents moved into newer neighborhoods with bigger and better homes.  We did that, too, moving to a big, brick house on Cooper Street, near Harris Hospital.  The streets around our old home became primarily rentals.  Most tenants were Mexicans, newly arrived from South of the Border, who did nothing to take care of the property.  The area became a slum. 

I was astonished when my old neighborhood, which is near downtown Fort Worth, became “gentrified.”  Young professionals bought the late Victorian houses – hardwood floors and quaint front porches – and updated the kitchens with granite counter tops, etc.    

Houses on the tour include one at 1800 Washington, just a block from our old house at 1824 S. Adams.  Another tour house is just around the corner at 1906 Henderson, across the street from where my brother Don’s wife, Mary, grew up.  Mary’s old home burned a few years ago, and a new house built in its place is in the Queen Anne style of the other homes in the neighborhood.

Don and I, who argue amicably about gun control and global warming, agree on one thing: our childhood home was awful.  A little frame house, built about 1900, had an “L” shaped front porch leading to a small entry hall and five square rooms.  Without an interior hallway, each wall had a door.  My front bedroom had doors from the entry, the dining room, and my parents’ bedroom.  A tiny closet was added in the corner of each of the two bedrooms. 

I had to cross my parents’ room to go to the bathroom.  Don and I believe the house originally had a privy in the backyard.  A porch across the back of the house was enclosed to make a bathroom, a back hall, and a tiny room for my brother Lyle.  The ice box (later a refrigerator) was in the back hall.  The 20-gallon gas water heater was in the kitchen next to the cook stove.

I could not imagine any way that house could be updated to make a livable residence.  I said, “It should be torn down.”

“It was,” said Don.  “The last time I went past, the house was gone and a foundation had been poured for a new house.”

I wonder what cute little fake Victorian house will be built to fit into the Historic District  Will it have “gingerbread” decoration on the front porch?