I Am A Historian - Remembering Family Homes

A few weeks ago when my brother, Fred, and I were cleaning my mother's garage he grabbed a heavy item sitting on one of the shelves, opened it and exclaimed, "Now why on earth was she keeping this?"  As he walked over to the trash bin to dispose of the bag which contained two old used bricks I yelled,   "Wait! Stop! Don't throw those away...those are from Grandma Montalto's house on Oakdale Ave." 

A number of years ago the old house, the house where my mother and her siblings were raised, the house where we children played with cousins, where we ran up and down the stairs to the second floor, where we gathered for family holiday dinners, where my Grandfather died, was demolished to provide space to expand the parking lot of the Polish Club next door.  Family members gathered at the site and emotionally grabbed some of the bricks before they were hauled away.  Two bricks were saved for my mother who lived in California, 3000 miles away from Lorain, OH and she carried them home with her after her next trip to visit family.  Having the bricks was like having a little piece of our family history and the bricks were an umbilical cord to our memories and our love for our family.

1720 Oakdale Ave - Home of the Montalto Family

1720 Oakdale Ave. Backyard where the garden used to be.

1720 Oakdale Ave. being demolished. 1994

1720 Oakdale was just one of the homes that held the role of "homestead" for our family.  My father's family grew up at 627 Franklin Ave, Kent, OH. That home also holds memories of a grandmother who buried your face in her soft, soft bosom when she hugged you, of learning to make gnocchi, of rabbits being raised in the backyard.  That house is still in the family and my dad's sister, Mary, continues to live there.

627 Franklin Ave. Home of Joseph & Harriet Rinaldi Family

When my parents married and moved to Kent, Ohio they eventually were able to buy 1034 Merydith St. This is the house where my siblings and I were raised. When I close my eyes, I can still walk from room to room in my head.  I can still feel how proud I was to finally have my own room when we remodeled the house. I can remember the feeling of running out the back door, hearing the screen door bang shut as I took off for the neighbor's house, and the sadness when we drove away from it in on a snowy day in November 1955 to move to Hawthorne, CA.  Whenever we visit family in Kent, I make a pilgrimage to the house and once was able to knock on the door and ask if I could visit inside just one more time.

1034 Merydith St. - Home of Archie & Grace Rinaldi Family - 1955 the day we left

In Hawthorne we moved to 5433 W. 140 St.  Here we spent our high school years, where I brought my toddlers to spend time with their grandparents, where my parents spent their last years and where my sister and her husband continue to live today.

5433 W. 140 St. - New home of the Rinaldi Family

When I married and was finally able to purchase our own home, we lived at 5515 W. 124 St.  Here my sons grew up, their dogs ran through the rooms, we marked their height on the door jamb, they held their wild high school parties, played musical instruments, invited friends to eat huge pasta dinners.  When I married Jay and moved to my current home, I finally decided to sell this house and my sons were very emotional about it, especially Marc. It was the only house he had ever lived in and he asked me, "How can you sell it?"  I asked him, "What do you want me to do, Marc, turn it into a shrine?"  Though my response was flip, I understood his feelings.  It was OUR house...how could someone else inhabit its walls.

5515 W. 124 St. - Home of the Altieri Family

Each of these homes represent an important time in the history of our family.  The walls ARE like a shrine.  They have held the hopes, dreams, fears, laughter, tears, the words of anger and the words of love.  They have sheltered us as a family from the physical and intangible elements from outside our little family unit and kept us safe and together.  So it seems right to honor these homesteads and to remember them.

As for the bricks...they are currently sitting on a shelf in MY garage.

Bricks from 1720 Oakdale Ave.

I hope my sons read this blog post so they will recognize them when the day comes for them to clean out my garage and they won't throw them out in the trash!