Photographs Of Places I've Lived # 1: Kingsley Manor

(Image from Google Maps.)

There's not much information online about the apartment complex called "Kingsley Manor."  Like many apartment buildings in & around the Dallas metroplex where I grew up, it has changed its name quite a bit.  The most recent name is "Kingsley Crossing."  It appears to be quite a dump (check out the online reviews) but that's not to say it wasn't like that when I lived there.

My parents divorced when I was around four years old (which would have been 1972) & my mother had very few choices where to go.  She had seven children - I suspect four or five of them were still at home - & the other two doubtless helped her pay for the apartment.

In my memory's correct - & it isn't - we lived in one of the apartments on the bottom level on the left up there.  I remember looking out of the window into Kingsley Avenue, a moderately busy street.  The front doors opened into a courtyard on the other side.  It wasn't a large place - I don't know how six of us lived there, & I'm not sure whom in my family I can ask to find out the details - but I suspect I lived there until part of my first grade year, or maybe before first grade.

This is the first place I remember living in.  There were other homes - houses my family rented, which my father's drinking caused us to lose - & I've never figured out exactly how many places that was before we moved into Kingsley Manor.  Too bad there aren't any pictures of that place online.  Besides the large white columns, I don't recognize much of those apartments - & I spent a summer delivering the paper to them, & my mother worked at a convenience right next to them until 1987.  So they existed in my world for much longer than I lived in them.

My thought it we lived there somewhat briefly - perhaps 1972 to 1973 or 1974.  Then we moved to an apartment complex down the street.