Years ago the famous "Madam," Polly Adler, wrote a book from which we stole the title of this blog. Her book did well, became a movie, and produced a great song of the same title.
Recently, I wrote a blog about my grandmother Lizzie Sullivan who lived up in Wilmerding, Pa in a style of home they referred to as a "railroad flat" and which I very much enjoyed visiting.
These were long narrow apartments with a hallway that ran from the front to the back. It was so named because it resembled a railroad car and might be only 20 feet wide. The style found favor in the mid 1800's in New York and San Francisco as a remedy for urban overcrowding.
Some railroad flats were built by large industrial employers like The Westinghouse Airbrake, Wilmerding's largest employer, in order for their employees to have a place close to the plant. Few people owned "machines" as Lizzie called them.
Over the years I have lived in a variety of houses . They including a basement apartment in Pittsburgh with rats in the outer basement and water bugs on the kitchen linoleum floor at night. The bugs appearance was timed with the extinguishment of the apartment lights. There was little resemblance to the wakening of the toys in Tchaikovsky's "The Nutcracker".
My family and I lived there as the larger home we rented in Forest Hills during WW II was no longer available to us. The owners - Mr. & Mrs. Woolslayer, were giving the home to their son, a recently discharged veteran and we were forced to move. Housing was almost impossible to find.
We were desperate. While contemplating moving in with Lizzie as a last resort, a friend of my Dad's made arrangements with his parents, the Snyders, to allow us to rent the basement unit.
It was much preferable than having to live in the streets. I'm sure Lizzie - although willing - breathed a long sigh of relief at knowing she could just visit her son, daughter-in -law and three small grandkids and not have to trip over them each morning.
A few years ago, my wife Phyl disposed of a large comfortable townhouse in order to join me in what some referred to as a well furnished tri-level in Harrisburg , that I semi-inherited. We stored her furniture for five years while deciding if we both needed a "new home" of our own.
During that time we also purchased a recently renovated double-wide as a Florida home in a 55 and older senior community. We moved here fulltime about 3 years ago. We simply did not need the larger Pennsylvania home, but, kept the door open to the purchase of a traditional home down here should we find our new digs to be too confining. While we continue to talk about it, we're comfortable.
We "reluctantly" traded the screams of children like the ones who enjoyed the pool of our next door neighbor in Pennsylvania for the more serene life we now enjoy. We love our home and have made several friends in the area. It's situated on a large lot with a privacy fence in the rear.
When we decided to move into our Florida home fulltime we sold - donated - or gave away almost two homes of furniture, including several paintings.
Many people from the northeast have moved to Florida fulltime and purchased large comfortable homes with square footage comparable to that of their previous homes. Several of these people have moved to a local development called Tara - named after a place up in Georgia that you may recall.
For some folks residence in Tara also comes with an attitude. It is a nice development we looked at when we first visited Bradenton. We felt at the time it was overpriced and the name recognition wasn't worth it. The lots we saw were mostly postage stamp size and afforded little privacy. Our home in Pennsylvania was at the foot of a mountain with a lot of trees.
We saw some of that Tara attitude the other night at Geckos as we were seated around the lounge area watching the golf tournament at Pebble Beach.
As often happens to my very attractive wife, a fellow male customer from Tara struck up a conversation with her. The conversation was going good until he asked Phyl where she resided. She told him about our comfortable 55 and older community and the conversation came to a screeching halt.
When the gentleman left she related the story to me and we both started to laugh. It's a reaction we often get and joke about with our friends - some of whom live in Tara. We discover they have Tara stories of their own about more than a few of the residents.
People will always be fascinating to me.
I sometimes wonder if those Tara folks enjoy their residence as much as I did the basement apartment that kept us off the streets, as much as Phyl , a little girl, enjoyed the small home her grandfather opened to her Mom , her two older sisters and herself in their time of need, or even Lizzy's railroad flat where I fondly spent my summer vacations. Now, those were homes!
As Phyl and I grew older we learned that a house can be a home - but, not always.
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