(image from Google Maps)
This is the place I lived in for most of the time I was in high school. I returned to stay here for the summer of 1987, after my first year of college. & I returned here again after my second year of college, although my mother was soon to be moving out of it. That's a long story. It is, for all intents & purposes, the last place I lived in in Garland. Although that's a little arguable.
It was built I believe in 1982, & we were the first family to occupy apartment # 1. I had to share a room again with my little brother, but he spent a great deal of time at our oldest sister's place, so often I was by myself. I had my first kiss in this house, with a girl named Heather on the floor after we watched a movie - I think it might have been St. Elmo's Fire. I also had long conversations on the phone with friends & strangers in this house, & I embarrassed myself more times than I can remember. I was deeply into both comics & records in this house - I bought my first stereo, from money I earned at a summer job, when I lived here, & I had a decent record collection by the time I went to college in August 1986.
It was just a block away from the convenience store owned by my mother's boyfriend, who (not coincidentally) moved into apartment # 5, across the little driveway from our front door. I'm sure he helped my mother pay the deposit & also probably paid a portion of the rent - my mother kind of had him wrapped around her finger. As I mentioned last week, we had been living with him until his drinking drove my mother away.
We didn't move from that house to this apartment, though. We spent a few weeks - I'm not sure how many - sleeping on the floor at my sister Pat's house. I am not entirely sure where it was. I don't have an address & none of the places I looked at on Google Maps looked familiar - it's been over thirty-five years after all. I turned 15 in my sister's house, & at the time she was very pregnant - she gave birth to my nephew Josh while we were living there. Once he was brought home, we had to go.
It's worth noting that we returned to the area where I lived from basically the age of four to the age of nine. & Little Brook Apartments was also on Cranford, just a couple hundred feet to the west. So by 1986 I had lived a quarter or so of my life on Cranford Drive.
Since my mother has gone, I have no reason to visit Garland anymore, but when I used to - mainly when I visited from Austin or from Kentucky - I would sometimes drive down Cranford Drive. It's a little rougher neighborhood than when I lived there - or so I've read. I have walked, ridden my bike, & driven up & down that street more times than I could count. & yet I can't feel terribly sentimental about this place. Maybe I did before, & repeated pilgrimages back have diminished its power somewhat. Or maybe I am just not as sentimental as I used to be.
There's one story about this place - I don't know if I mentioned it before - I was downstairs one night & heard a crash from upstairs. I rushed up & went into my mother's bedroom. Her ceiling fan seemed to be going crazy, & her dog Kalijah was a bit freaked out. It turns out one of the blades had broken off & flew across the room. I turned the fan off & made sure she was all right - she had slept through the commotion. It could have hurt her, maybe even hurt her badly. It could have gone through her window - that's the one that faced front on the second floor in the picture above. She barely acknowledged me & went back to sleep, although I'm sure we talked about it the next day - she had to get a new ceiling fan. Or did she ever get a new ceiling fan?
Years later I asked her about this, & she had no memory of it. She may have thought I was making it up. But nope!
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