<\/p>\n
I spent<\/strong><\/span> my entire childhood in the same house. Nothing moved. I certainly didn\u2019t. I knew where everything was. In 1951 I think my dad told a builder something like \u201cbuild me a house.\u201d That simple. A three-bedroom colonial in South Euclid.<\/p>\n I bounced<\/span> a basketball in the driveway at all hours. That really annoyed the old man next door who was ill. I blared clarinet. That was also annoying. Everything was new and grand. The car wasn\u2019t new, but it was grand. A used Ford.<\/p>\n My mother had a second phone line installed in the kitchen for my parents\u2019 door-to-door cosmetics company, Ovation of California. The phone was a Princess. It was sleek and rarely rang. That business went under. In the basement, my dad had a lab where he made foot powder. I could go on (like I did in a recent Wall Street Journal<\/em> article<\/a> about my dad). Here’s a new one on Toby: my dad wanted to collaborate with Case profs\/scientists to make a toaster that would take the calories out of bread. No takers from Case.<\/p>\n My friends<\/strong> <\/span>and neighbors never moved. John, across the street, died of alcoholism and mental illness in 1992. He lived in the same house his whole life — 41 years.<\/p>\n I think of going back there, to my old house. I drive near there. I decide against it. Best to go by bike and get the full flavor.<\/p>\n My dad worked for a key company, which almost transferred him. Here are the three “almost transferred” cities: Edison, New Jersey; Richmond, California; and Toronto.<\/p>\n I often meet people who moved so frequently as children they don’t have a hometown. That’s not me.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" I spent my entire childhood in the same house. Nothing moved. I certainly didn\u2019t. I knew where everything was. In 1951 I think my dad told a builder something like \u201cbuild me a house.\u201d That simple. A three-bedroom colonial in South Euclid. I bounced a basketball in the driveway at all hours. That really annoyed […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[11],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-29267","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-coming-of-age"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.yiddishecup.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/29267","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.yiddishecup.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.yiddishecup.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.yiddishecup.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.yiddishecup.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=29267"}],"version-history":[{"count":10,"href":"http:\/\/www.yiddishecup.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/29267\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":29302,"href":"http:\/\/www.yiddishecup.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/29267\/revisions\/29302"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.yiddishecup.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=29267"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.yiddishecup.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=29267"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.yiddishecup.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=29267"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}