“Every house has a story to tell.”
Today is a day to be out and about. It has bit of spring about it at 54°. Green shoots have appeared in my front garden. They will be yellow daffodils.
Nala was out for a while so I went to check. I know she didn’t get out of the yard, but memories of Gracie always get me to check. Nala is lying on her favorite spot, a patch of grass in the sun.
My house is celebrating spider season. I saw the biggest spider this morning. It was walking by the butcher block on its way to a chair rung. I don’t know the sort of spider it was, but when I was a kid, we used to call it a daddy long-legs. I watched it.
When I was a kid, we lived in a project. It wasn’t what you’d imagine a project looks like. The houses were duplexes. They all had small front beds for flowers and small grassy lawns. The backyard was shared. My house sat on the corner on a hill. The front of my house was a bit different than the front of the other houses because of that hill. We not only had a grassy lawn on the front and side of the house, but we also had a grassy hill down to the street. The front walk led to some steps which went down to the sidewalk. My father parked right by those steps.
Everywhere near the project where we roamed is gone now. Even when I lived there they started replacing the field and the swamp with brick houses containing small apartments for the elderly. My father used to call it wrinkle city. His mother lived in one ground floor apartment in a building where the woods used to be. Every time I was cajoled to go with him to visit her I’d remember how it used to be.
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keepthecoffeecoming.blog 
February 27, 2024 at 2:42 pm
Hi Kat,
Today is mostly cloudy so the predicted high temperature is only 86°. This morning the low was 66° and I didn’t even need a jacket. Last night we had the air conditioning running upstairs. Who would think you needed AC in February?
When I was a kid in Dallas we lived a complex of two story apartments. There was grass in the front and in the back. Each building was a four-plex of apartments two downstairs and two upstairs. This was in the 1950s and the complex was full of kids around my and my sister’s ages. It was a baby boomer community. Unfortunately, those apartments, which were near the outskirts of Dallas, have become prime real estate. The buildings have been demolished a long time ago and replaced by high end condominiums and town houses. The city has expanded exponentially since.
Sadly, many of the areas close to downtown have been gentrified. The less expensive apartments which were close to bus and train lines have been demolished and replaced by high dollar real estate and have became too expensive for the working classes who used to live in those areas.
Since the housing debacle in 2009, when house prices crashed, there has been a shortage of affordable housing. Apartment rents here have gone through the roof. Besides the high rents, landlords are now adding extra monthly charges for things like sewage, garbage pickup, and natural gas surcharges all based on your apartment’s square footage. Six hundred square foot one bedroom apartments rent for $1,200 per month.
February 27, 2024 at 9:16 pm
Hi Bob,
Today by Cape Cod standards was warm, the high 40’s. Tomorrow will be downright tropical, in the 50’s, but it will also rain. I usually start using my air conditioner in August.
I find it sad that the generations behind us will never have the fun we had growing up with lots of land and trees and meadows around.
You had to be a veteran to live in the project. It was also filled with kids though not as many my age as younger. My town grew out, widened, as there were few open places within the town. The old dairy farm was sold for its land. It was an amazing place. Now it is ugly.
The old shoe factory right down from the square was sold and became massively expensive condominiums. When I was a kid, it still made shoes. Many of the old stores are gone, but much of the square still retains the look it had.
Boston has one of the all time shortages of affordable housing so what is available is so, so expensive. The cape too has very few available and reasonable housing. The house down the street was only under $40,000 when it was bought in the late 70’s. It has been refurbished and is on sale for $660,000.