RED BRICK

When my oldest brother reached high school age, my parents decided that they should move to neighboring Arlington County, where the schools were much better. In 1950, they purchased a home about a mile away in a new subdivision full of red brick homes.  All the homes in the neighborhood, which encompassed many, many blocks, were exactly the same.  The only differences may have been the color of the wood trim on the eaves, the color of the front door,or perhaps the addition of a screened in porch off the living room. There were no garages. I could go in any of the homes of my friends who lived in the neighborhood and find the same floor plan. Most of my friends had the same bedroom in their house that I had in mine. Some of the homeowners fenced in their back yards.  But for the most part, there were no fences between the homes.  The kids in the neighborhood ran freely between the back yards, taking short cuts to friend's homes.

My childhood home at 6801 29th Street North, Arlington, Virginia had a living room, dining room, kitchen, bathroom and 3 bedrooms on the main floor.  The basement was unfinished.  But with five children, two of them teenage boys, my father quickly set to work finishing the basement.  It was a slow process because he did most of the work himself.  I don't think that it was completely finished by the time my oldest brother graduated from high school. When he finished, there were two bedrooms, a bathroom, large recreation room and a laundry/storage area in the basement.  Even though, to me, the house seemed big, it was probably no more than 1400 sq. ft on the finished main floor.

 The basement had its little quirks and peculiarities.  My father built a laundry chute.  The opening was towards the top of the basement stairs.  Instead of falling straight down, the clothes slid down what could be called a clothes slide and landed at the bottom where the clothes were accessed by a small door.  The opening to the chute, the slide and the door at the bottom were big enough for a child to use as an indoor sliding board...which I did, along with my friends.We'd make the short, quick trip to the bottom and then race back up the stairs to do it over again.  It was all the better if there were clothes piled at the bottom. It was also a great place for hiding in games of Hide and Go Seek.

Both of the basement bedrooms had built in closets, desks and a set of drawers.  In one bedroom, the set of drawers didn't come all the way to the floor.  Dad finished the interior of what was below the drawers except for some reason, he didn't fill in the back of the opening.  The opening was directly in front of the furnace. When the furnace was running, the pilot light gave off a glow into the bedroom. The opening also provided another place in the basement for little kids to play, crawling back and forth between the bedroom and the furnace room. Thinking back now, the opening was probably left to let the heat from the furnace warm the bedroom.

Because Virginia summers could be unbearably hot and humid, the finished basement was a refuge for the family.  There was no central air back then.  Being an engineer, my father designed a table that pulled out from wall in the rec room - kind of like a Murphy bed.  On the unbearable summer evenings, we had dinner at the table in the basement.  The table also got a lot use by my mother with her sewing projects. The table also served a refreshment table when my oldest sister had her wedding reception in the basement of our home.

The basement bathroom was the most quirky of all.  It had the necessary fixtures, sink, toilet and shower. However, the plumbing just never worked right.  After all, my father was an engineer, not a plumber.
The shower was lined with plastic tiles which were continually falling off the wall.  I know that Dad made repairs from time to time. But I don't think, the shower wall was ever properly tiled with ceramic tile.

The cinder block walls in the basement were painted white. Due to the high humidity in Virginia, there was often water seeping through the cinder block. The interior walls were covered with wallpaper.  The main rooms had a yellow/cream/tan paper.  But one basement bedroom had an unusual pattern of gray plaid, with pink and white. It was really quite atrocious. The floors were finished in a green tile.  It was nothing fancy, but served the family well for the thirteen years that we lived there.