How many different homes have you lived? I’ve lived in nine (counting the three apartments I’ve rented), but can’t decide if that is just a few, in the average range for a retired person or a lot.

Here is my childhood home and the childhood home of my father, too:

49 Summer Street, Passaic, New Jersey

On Pearl Harbor Day, 7 December 1963, we moved to the suburbs:

4 Winters Drive, Wayne, New Jersey

When I finished college, got my first teaching job and got my first apartment, I settled in to life in Rhode Island for three years:

270 Fruit Hill Avenue, North Providence, RI
Source: Bing Maps

Next, I accepted a job offer in Mexico City, Mexico. I roomed with four other young ladies in an apartment just outside the boundary of the Polanco neighborhood. I can’t for the life of me remember the address, but I do remember the apartment was quite empty except for some beds and I think a small sofa in the living room. I was very suprised to discover the old mansion where I taught at Colegio Eton, Alpes 605, Lomas de Chapultepec neighborhood, is still owned by the school, but is now the preschool campus:

Source: GoogleEarth

Notice the 25th anniversary sign on the left celebrating the school.

After my time in Mexico, I moved to Upland, California and rented my last apartment. At the time they were the Apple Apartments. I don’t know what they are called today, but they were renamed years ago.

1334 W. Foothill Blvd., Upland, California
Source: GoogleEarth

My apartment was right downstairs from the one you see here and was located at the far west front side of the complex, right on busy Foothill Boulevard, which is the old Route 66.

When Dave and I got married, we bought our first home in Alta Loma, California:

6637 Jasper Street, Alta Loma, California

Dave named our first cat Jasper after the street name. Today the house sits about three properties south of the 210 freeway. We lived there for five years before moving a bit northward – 3/4 of a mile – but still in Alta Loma.

6245 Celestite Avenue, Alta Loma, California

This was home for the next 26 years. When we retired, we headed to Oro Valley, Arizona, following Dave’s brother-in-law and his family, who settled here in 2003.

We’ve actually lived in two houses in Oro Valley.

Arizona House #1
Source: GoogleEarth

I just realized that I don’t have a good photo of the front of this house, so GoogleEarth will have to help out here. See the tall tree on the left? That is the tree made famous as the header photo in my blog. You can’t see it from this angle, but it has the big dead branch in it. We lived here for four years, but I couldn’t keep up with all the yard work. I never knew that picking up and trimming cactus was so much work! The new owners stripped out every single cactus on this one acre property so it looks very different.

We’ve been in our current house for two years and it’s a lot less work, being on a half acre that includes the house, a pool and part of a desert wash.

Arizona House #2

There you have it – six houses and three apartments covers my lifetime. Which is my favorite? I have to admit, it’s my childhood home in Passaic.

In how many different homes have you lived?