Over the past year, I’ve semi-moved twice, once to an apartment a few blocks from my parents’ house, and the second time to my new house. The first move wasn’t really a move and felt more like a designed re-organization. I would sleep at my apartment, but I’d go back to my parent’s house to check in the internet and cook most of my meals. In the eight months I had that apartment, I would be surprised if I cooked more than twelve non-breakfast meals in my apartment. When I came to my house, it was a real move
Each of my residences each has an unique flavor, which conversely is what is one of the oddity’s a town Seward’s size. Even though there’s only 7,000 or so people here, the neighborhoods mirror pre- and post-World War II style, and Hillcrest Street divides the town smoothly along those lines.
My parent’s house is a duplex that sits on a semi-busy suburban street, (East) Pinewood, which comes off Highway 15. Ironically, my aunt in the Bay Area gets less noise on the street she lives on than we got on our street because she lives in a circle off the main street. (In California, a house where you have less noise is more valuable than it is in rural America.) The garage dominates the front of the house, making it looks smaller than it actually is. The windows to the backyard and the upstairs balcony do create a lot of room, but I always felt like I was looking out at the interstate of walkers and school children passing my kitchen window, back and forth, back and forth all day. I heard the school children playing in the morning and the parents coming home and taking their kids to practice in the evening, even as I was stowed away on my private island.
The House by the Elementary School…
As I have alluded to, I felt semi-home at my apartment, which was the definition of a studio space. My realtor told me that renting is for people who want to do nothing but work and not do home maintenance, making that your residence nothing more than a glorified Motel 6. The complex, a mess of college students and other twenty-somethings, represented a mass of humanity at life way stations. In my constant desire to be alone, I always seemed to work my hours so that I woke up well after everyone else left for first shift at five in the morning, and arrived back after everyone else was in bed.
After I had lived their for three months, I felt much more safe than I ever felt on Pinewood because there were a lot of people living close to my apartment and could hear the city bustle when I lay awake in bed. Even when a door slammed at three in the morning and someone stormed out, it was mildly disturbing when I slept in proximity to others, very similar to the time I lived in a dorm just off the freeway in St. Paul, Minnesota.
Street by my Apartment…
I don’t want to make conclusive assertions about my new house, since I’ve only lived here a month. There’s more drive-by traffic than I expected because of an one-way street that forces some people to drive by my north corner, but overall it’s not bad. From the outside, my house looks bigger than it is; I’ve already got stuff strewn everywhere. I have a porch I can sit on in to read and watch people go by. There aren’t as many walkers as there are on Pinewood, just the hodge-podge of people who live around me. Since I’m in an old part of town, the houses around me are kept up to varying degrees. Some are ghost houses, some have been refurbished and dazzle, others are abandoned, still some are being rebuilt. It is not crowded with families and retirees like Pinewood was. In a way, it’s like cities were back in the 1950′s, when people of all walks of life and political persuasions lived close to one another. While I have left the old walking trails that lead around the ball fields behind, I can now walk into downtown Seward, mega-plus.
My new house is a dilemma in the making. I love the old-school neighborhood and the old-school high windows and ceiling, but my house is small and lacks the closet space of a modern house. I would really miss being close to the coffee shop and the bank if I had to move, but I’m getting ahead of myself. Who knows what opportunities will come by in the next thirty to forty years? I may even get a chance to leave Seward.
But if I stay, it’s great to know that Seward has plenty of options.
Rocking it at the Crib…
Thanks to St. John for letting me stow this here…
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Derek Johnson
