Whizzing Through America: Living Memories Tour, Charleston Park-Houston

The Charleston Park Apartments had everything a newly married couple could want, a place for a bed, a private swimming pool (at least when we were using it), and economical as we never had to heat it. (I had to stretch for that last one as we did run the air conditioner but for a couple who had just moved to Houston away from the [Ohio] Blizzard of '78 and were swimming in March when the natives were still wearing their winter clothes, the heat from the apartments above and beside us was enough.)

We also had a view, of the parking lot from our bedroom. We even had an attached laundry room, unfortunately one that was shared by others and one which we had to get to from the outside. Still, after living in hotels and eating at restaurants for three weeks, we were so ready to call any non-hotel place a home. Before it got too blazingly hot, we even used the apartments' tennis courts. (No longer there.)

Houston truly has perfect weather, about four weeks of it: two weeks in the spring and two weeks in the fall. The other times are either a damp chill or a humid heat. I still comment about Houston's deadly 98's, 98% humidity at 98 degrees. While I worked at Greenway Plaza for Coastal Corporation, I could look out in the afternoon and see it raining from the humidity hitting 100% and see sprinklers on as well.

All of this is why we ended up traveling all around Texas almost every weekend. Several of my already written Memories of Marilyn feature activities that we did while we lived in this apartment.

Picnic on the Floor

Is Pearl there?

The original 'Fun Hunt'. My two younger sisters came down to visit us ten and a half months after we had moved to share Christmas with us. They both ended up moving to Texas later, my youngest for just a brief while but the next to the youngest stayed long enough to get married and have four children before moving [back] to Ohio. The "fun hunt" became our children's birthday thing after they could read but all while we were in Houston we continued the Christmas / New Years Day tradition of going up to the Woodlands, which was also started right from this apartment.

Seeing Texas: Laredo

Unlike the current exit where the north bound lanes of Main Street are blocked and every exiting car is forced to turn right, when we lived their there was no gate and no boulevard apartment entrance. Instead, it was one inbound lane and one outbound lane with a crossover in the median between the southbound lanes of Main Street and the north bound lanes. This is how we came to have our "accident."

Seeing Texas: San Antonio

Seeing Texas: Mustang Island

Then there were the cockroaches. I don't know whether it would have done any good but the apartment complex only sprayed apartments that requested it, not the whole building at a time. All this did was chase the cockroaches from the just sprayed apartment to the adjoining ones until the poison had worn off in the previously sprayed apartment and the newly infested ones finally got the apartment management to spray.

My parents and oldest sister, still younger than me, with her daughter came to visit in our first Houston summer while we were in this apartment--in a truck. It was before seat belt laws and they rode in the back, in the covered bed of the truck, which was well padded.

All in all, there are many fond memories of Texas due to this apartment and even fond memories of this apartment due to Marilyn.