Whizzing Through America: Living Memories Tour, Batavia - OH

I couldn't find this place and suspect that it doesn't exist anymore. Since I found a vacant lot, I'm claiming the lot as the place we used to live, even though it is diagonally across from a church that looked old enough to have been there when we were and I don't remember there being a church there.



Even though the house was a small bungalow-type with a basement and overlapped wood siding, this brick somewhat similar sized building on a corner lot matched several points of my memory, well, those two, but I'm sure it wasn't this building or in this location. But, the brick building was next to the empty lot.

My most significant memory of the house was the basement coal hopper that fed the furnace. It was my "manly" job to fill the hopper.

My only real memory of the school was my enrollment. I was asked what kinds of grades I got and I said that I had gotten a "C" once. Indeed I had, but it wasn't a final grade maybe not even a quarterly one. Anyway, after being in a class for a week or two they must have gotten my transcripts and I was transferred to another class.

My best memories of this place were of the church. Here my father was the youth minister and my mother helped out. I particularly remember the Biblical children's stories that my father would read or tell while Mother did chalk drawings as illustration. (I, and my sisters, used to be entertained for as long as she could stand it by her taking our squiggles and completing them into real pictures. I was amazed at the imagination that saw that particular picture almost as much as I was the artistic ability that gave it life.)

We spent a lot of time with the pastor's family and I remember their parsonage probably better than where we lived. The parsonage had a main stairs up to the upstairs and a back stairs down to the kitchen. Plus, they had at least one child my age--a girl--so we didn't run around that much but there has to be some reason I remember these stairs that well. Then, they were also members of a local swimming pool...