View of our house at 5433 Kirby Road (1940s-50s numbering system), about 1950. Living room, dining room, kitchen, bathroom, 2 bedrooms, no basement. And a small utility room with a concrete tub where my mom did the laundry with brown soap and a washboard. The house cost $7000 in 1947 when it was new. This was one of very few of the GI-Bill cubes left standing when I first wrote this page (according to Google street view). My Dad and I built the addition on the back ourselves, with the help of a professional carpenter named Julian. Forest in the background, brand-new 1950 Ford in the driveway, our first car. There were no sewers then so we had a septic tank under the front lawn. Wild onions grew with the grass, and my Mom had mint planted around the perimeter of the house but I don't see it in this picture. Next door: our neighbors the Casons, a retired couple whose phone we used until we got our own. A lot of sharing in those early postwar years.... The first family that got a TV set was suddenly very popular, everybody went to their house to watch Martha Raye or Sid Caesar or a Wash­ington Senators ball game. Nobody had air conditioning though, so TV parties in the summer would be cooled by oscillating electric fans with ice-cube trays in front. The normal thing, however, was to stay home in the evenings and listen to radio dramas: Lone Ranger, Dragnet, Gang Busters, X Minus One, ...

The original house was replaced in 2015 at age 68 by a frame house at 1849 Kirby Road (new numbering system), valued by Zillow at $1,812,900 as of late 2023.