House # 21

House # 21

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This is the second house we had in Levelland TX. I liked it a lot. It had three bedrooms, a living room, kitchen, garage, and one bathroom. There was an apple tree and an apricot tree in the big fenced in back yard, too.

This house was right across the street from a nice park, and just down the street from a graveyard.

The dogs would fight over the apples when the fruit dropped from the trees, as they loved eating them. When they heard one hit the ground they would race over to be the first to get it. haha. They never wanted the apricots, though.

One day we heard a big crash, and a big hawk had crashed into our front window. He was okay, but a little stunned. The Mr. gathered him up and took him over to the park, setting him up on a tree branch. He did finally fly way.

We lost one of the dogs who crossed the rainbow bridge, which was so sad. But we gained a black cat. I found the little kitten in a parking lot and brought him home. He was a good kitty.

I liked how the kitchen was done. It was separated from the dining area by a short bar, and the room was separate from the living room instead of being all one big area. More like an old fashioned farm house kitchen, I guess you’d say.

We were here for awhile, at least a year I’m sure. Funny my daughter reminded me of the addresses of this house and the last one was almost the same – one being 703 and one 307. I’d forgotten that.

Then, we tried again to get a house back in our home town of Lubbock. We went house hunting several weeks, as we were wanting to buy one. Finally, we did find one and signed the papers right before midnight that night. I think (not sure) that our GI loan time period was going to run out to use it at midnight of that last day when we signed.

Then came the part of moving I don’t like. Actually packing up everything and moving it. Ugh what a job!

But we did it, and the next house is the last one. We’ve been in the last one for over 20 years now. 🙂

 

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Thanks for visiting! Peace ☮️

© 2021 BS

House # 20

House # 20

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Our years at Ft. Hood/Killeen TX were done, as the Mr. retired from the Army. We were moving back to our home town of Lubbock. We looked at houses there, but couldn’t find any we liked, or that would rent to people with pets. At the time we had 4 dogs and a rabbit.

So we went to another smaller town about 30 miles down the road – Levelland TX and found this one. It was pretty nice, a brick, 3 bedroom, kitchen, and living room one. There was a really big shed in the big back yard, too.

This first photo is of the back yard and a part of the shed. There was a covered patio, too, and you can see a couple of our dogs out there. The rabbit was kept out in the shed in his cage, and we’d get big hay bales to scatter around on the floor for the dogs to burrow down into if they wanted.

The second photo is one I got from a google search of the address of the front of the house. We were there for at least a year.

There was one thing that stands out while we were there. Right behind us was a tall pole with the emergency alert system/siren on it. They would run a test at least once a month, with announcements, and blowing the siren for several minutes. Oh my word it was loud! The dogs would be scared and howl.

We’d moved in here on Halloween of that year. haha! Actually, it felt so strange that after living so long on the mostly enclosed community of base housing at Ft. Hood, we were a bit anxious to be out in the ‘wild’ open kind of town. We did finally find our way around the small town.

And then we had to find another house in the town, because the owner of this one we were renting had sold it. So we were out. It didn’t take long though, to find another house.

That will be next time.

 

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Thanks for visiting! Peace ☮️

© 2021 BS

Monday Peeve

Monday Peeve 

https://lightmotifs.wordpress.com/2021/07/26/tmp18-roadwork/#comment-53499

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I’m joining in Paula’s Monday Peeve today, because this problem bugs me every time.

It’s the media storage space on WP. I run out of space all the time, because I post lots of pictures. But still, I wish they had unlimited space without buying ever more expensive plans.

I just renewed my subscription to WP, as I do every year, and it’s a paid for one. I think if you re-new for a year, we should get another year’s worth of media storage space. Right?

So now I’m out for the millionth time it seems. All I can do is delete a lot … a lot … of my post’s photos in order to put a new one up. This bugs me so much.

And, it’s not one for one either! Seems I have to delete about 50 to 100 photos to get space for one or two new ones.  Do you know how long it takes to go back through old photos to decide if you want to get rid of one or not? A long time.

I was going to do my Tree Square challenge photo today, and my next House post today, but nope, can’t upload a photo until I take a day out to delete some photos. Ugh!!!

So that’s my peeve today.

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Thanks for visiting! Peace ☮️

© 2021 BS

House # 19

House # 19

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After the Mr. got back from his stint in S. Korea, he was assigned to Ft. Hood TX. The town it’s next to is Killeen TX.  We did live in government housing right there on base in one of the Villages for family housing. It was called Chaffee Village.

I don’t have any good photos of the outside of the house, but this first one is from a google search. Ours looked like this, where it was brick and siding, with a large divided type window. There were two houses connected by a carport.

The second photo is one I took of our front windows. It looks like the girls had taped up Halloween decorations on the window panes.

We lived in this house for almost 10 years. We liked it fine. There were three bedrooms, a large living room/dining room combo, a kitchen, and two bathrooms. We had a huge back yard which we had fenced in, and a couple of large trees in the back yard. One was more of a huge bush that had pretty white flowers growing on it in the summer.

We had a patio where we cooked out sometimes, too. All the neighbors were friendly and all the kids in the neighborhood knew each other and would roam around everywhere. There were activities for all on base. We really liked living here.

A couple of things we got used to by living on a large Army base was helicopters flying over, sometimes landing right by the road, seeing tanks driving down the road was common, the bugle playing of reveille in the early mornings, the playing of taps in the evenings, and soldiers marching here and there.

We also got used to hearing the cannons booming and our windows rattling when the troops were out in the field for training.

One strange incident that happened on more than one occasion was with our phone. It was a phone hung on the wall, with an extra long curly cord. Sometimes this phone’s receiver would just shoot out from the base of the phone, the cord stretched all the way across the room. The phone wasn’t broken at all, and you’d think if it was, it would just drop down to the floor. But no, this was forcefully thrown of it’s own accord. Never knew when it would happen, and just lucky we weren’t hit with it, though we’d just be sitting there when it happened.

Well, I can’t tell ten years of memories in one post here, so moving on … the Mr. retired from the Army after his last overseas post, which was Somalia. The girls and I just stayed here while he was gone.

Then it was time to move again … and we went back to our home town for the last three houses.

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Thanks for visiting! Peace ☮️

© 2021 BS

Prize Winner? – Stream of Consciousness Saturday – Color

Prize Winner? – Stream of Consciousness Saturday – Color 

https://lindaghill.com/2021/07/23/the-friday-reminder-and-prompt-for-socs-july-24-2021/

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Your Friday prompt for Stream of Consciousness Saturday is “color/colour.” Use it as a noun, a verb, or pick a color and write about it–use it any way you like. Have fun!

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I love to color in coloring books, and I always have. I remember when I was a kid, hoping the dime store/variety store we shopped at would have a prize for being the 100th customer of the day. I of course would be the winner when I came through the door. haha … anyway the prize would be I could have any whole aisle of the store for free! I always chose the coloring books and crayons. I wanted them all.

I ‘helped’ when my girls were coloring, because I wanted to color, too. Now there are loads of coloring books for grown ups to enjoy, and yes, I have whole drawers full of them.

It’s fun to find out there are many blog challenges about colors, and I do some of these, too. Linda’s Escapist Coloring Club is one, and Jennifer’s Color Your World is another. Some others have dedicated days or weeks for photos of one color or another.

I like to use all color markers, pencils, crayons, and pens for coloring the pages. There are so many ways colors affect our lives. From the things we see every day, to beautiful scenery here on earth and up in the sky.

Hope your weekend is full of fun and color! ❤

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Thanks for visiting! Peace ☮️

© 2021 BS

 

 

House # 18

House # 18

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The next house we moved to was in Beeville Texas, which is still in the southern part of the state. It wasn’t all that far from the last house, in Sinton, but still in a different city near the coast. The Mr. still worked at the Army Reserve Center in Sinton, just he had to travel a bit farther from this next house to get there.

I don’t have a good picture that I took myself of the house, just this one where I googled the address. It was I guess what you’d call an apartment? There were blocks of houses – 4 each, scattered around. This also shows the parking lot. Ours was in this brick building, but on the far side on the ground floor. There was a little side road beside us, too.

It had two bedrooms, a living room/dining room, a kitchen, a bath, and a laundry room. I think they were fairly new buildings, and pretty nice. We didn’t have carpets and it wasn’t furnished. We did have the pieces of furniture we already had, and we finally got rid of that huge sofa, and bought new living room couch, chair, coffee table, and end tables. Actually we still have the tables we use even now.

This housing area belonged to the government, as  in the Chase Naval Air Station. The actual base was 4 miles up the road, where all the planes, offices, hospital, commisary, library, and all were. There were more housing there, too.

Beeville is a small -ish town, not bad at all. I loved going to the library there. Well, every single place we lived, one of the first places I’d find was the library. Of course! haha 🙂

One thing everyone did here was take empty jugs, travel up to the base, and fill them with water. There was a spigot that everyone used. It’s because the local tap water was way too salty. I guess the water on the base came from a different place, because it was nice tasting water. As far as I know back then there were not those special water filling places like you see everywhere these days.

Let’s see what else … In the evenings I could look out the back door and see bats emerging from the attic vents in the houses across the way. We were here when there was a total, or mostly total eclipse of the sun happened. Very eerie when going from bright sunlight, to darkness in the middle of the morning! It was like a hush came over the land, so quiet … the birds settled down to sleep, and the street lights came on. Then of course the sun came back out and all went on as normal.

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Next time: The girls and I move back home to my parents house for a year, because the Mr.’s next duty assignment was to South Korea.

I don’t know that that counts. It was another move, but to the same house I grew up in.

After that year, we moved on down to Killeen TX, and Fort Hood Army base housing.

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Thanks for visiting! Peace ☮️

© 2021 BS

House # 17

House # 17

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This is the next house we moved to. It was in Sinton, in south Texas. It is 16 miles from Corpus Christie TX and the Gulf of Mexico and the beaches.

Basically this house was a trailer house, but permanently settled. It had two bedrooms, a kitchen and a living room, and a laundry room. It was okay, and I guess we lived there at least a year.

The Mr. had been assigned to running the Army Reserve Center there.

The second photo shows the back of the house (the first one I googled the address).

We had a huge banana tree in the back yard, and also a peach tree. That was so fun picking bananas from the tree each morning to have with our cereal. One time the Mr. brought in a bunch and a long green snake fell out into the kitchen floor. Well, me and the girls screamed and ran! haha 🙂

We’d also see roadrunners in the back yard, and the railroad tracks were pretty close behind our house, too. The girls would wave to the engineer and conductor when it passed by.

And … there were hobos! Hobos would jump off the train and come to the back door to ask for food. I’d make them a peanut butter and jelly sandwich and they’d be very grateful and be on their way.

I also had my first encounter with fire ants! They were everywhere, and man can they bite! You had to be careful of where you were standing, because they’d swarm up your feet and legs and latch on. Very painful!

We also had to get ready for a hurricane that was possibly going to come to Corpus Christi. Being so close to the coast even we had to prepare. We were lucky though, as it veered another direction and didn’t hit us. I think it came ashore more toward Houston that time.

Oh, another thing … we had some furniture with us this time. We had the same big old couch, a coffee table, and a rocking chair that used to belong to my mom & dad. We had a nice refrigerator, and beds for everyone. Yay! The only thing we didn’t have was a stove, but though one came with this rent house, it didn’t work at all. The landlord kept saying he’d get us another one, but it took forever, like right before we moved again, we finally got a working one.

So, I had to cook everything in the microwave. It worked out pretty good though. We did have an electric popcorn popper  – a stir crazy – that had a heated place, so I’d fry eggs on there, or make pancakes on it. So weird, but it worked.

First photo is the front of the house (I googled to find it, as I didn’t have a photo)

Second photo I took of the back of the house showing the big banana tree that was taller than the house. There came a freak freeze in the winter and it destroyed the banana tree. So sad.

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Next up we get government housing again in Beeville TX (still in south Texas)

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Thanks for visiting! Peace ☮️

© 2021 BS

House # 15 & 16

House # 15 & 16

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So, we came back from Japan and the Mr. was assigned back to Ft. Sill Oklahoma. We lived in the town of Lawton, which was right outside the post. While he was getting situated, the girls and I stayed back home with my parents until he could find us a house.

But the first one he found was so awful! We’d had everything shipped to this horrible house, but we didn’t stay there but a very short time. We just had to find something better. I mean, this house was filthy, the carpets sticky and trashy, I didn’t want to touch anything, much less let the girls in there. And the bedroom windows were falling out at the slightest touch. Ugh!!

So we finally found another place which was very much nicer. This one in the photo below.

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I looked on Google Street Maps to find the address we lived at back then. Of course this is many years later in this picture, but it sure looks familiar. I know it was a white brick house, and there was a pine tree in the front yard. The tree sure has grown!

This house had three bedrooms, a bath, living room and kitchen/dining room and a garage. The back yard was large and fenced in. We were here for I’m sure a year or more.

The house was not furnished. It was a rent house though, and had a stove and a small kind of old fashioned refrigerator. I think it had a kitchen table and four chairs. We had no furniture to bring with us from Japan, either, except for my youngest girl’s baby crib. The rest of us slept on the floor, and just sat on boxes in the living room.

Finally, awhile later on, my cousin sent a big overstuffed couch and a funny large brown chair, by my uncle in Oklahoma City when he came by one day. I don’t know how to describe that chair. It was fuzzy kind of material, and had a sloping kind of shape? the kids liked to use it for a slide. haha! Awhile later we did manage to get beds.

We didn’t have a washer or dryer, so I’d either take clothes to the laundromat, or I’d wash everything in the sink on a rub board, and hang it all out on the clothesline to dry.

We had a huge honeysuckle vine right outside the kitchen window. It smelled so good, so I’d leave the window open.

My oldest girl started pre-school there in town, and had a few friends in the neighborhood. One’s big sister (they lived behind our house) would play her stereo loud all the time, mostly “Another One Bites the Dust” by Queen!

~ next up we move to south TX

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Thanks for visiting! Peace ☮️

© 2021 BS

House # 14 – Japan

House # 14 – Japan

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I finally found the picture of the house we lived in on the Army housing area in Japan!

Sagamihara, Japan … As a military family for over 20 years, my husband was stationed at Camp Zama, Japan. We lived almost two years here, in government housing. Japan is a beautiful country, with mountains, forests, and the ocean. We experienced one of the largest typhoons recorded at the time, while we were there, Typhoon Tip, and many earthquakes shook the place, quite often.

This is the post I wrote about the typhoon:

SUPER TYPHOON TIP…CAT 5

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Our house on the Army housing base had two bedrooms, a living/dining room, one bath, and a small kitchen. It was on the end of a group of four – ours one story, two 2 story ones in the middle, and another one story house on the other end. It was furnished already with the usual things you need, like beds, couch and chair, stove, refrigerator – all those kinds of things.

Right behind us was a large yard with tall trees, and a tennis court. Beyond that was a short walk to the small commisary/grocery store, and I’m thinking the movie theater and a library was there, too.

We had nice neighbors, and on weekends everyone would get together for cook outs. It didn’t matter if it was hot weather, snowy weather, or typhoon rainy weather, we’d be out there at the grill.

Sometimes the girls and I would get on a bus and go to the actual base. It was located aways from the housing area. There we would be able to go to the big commisary, the PX, places to eat, a thrift store, well, like a mall to shop in.

Other times we’d go just outside our housing area and basically be in Tokyo, the suburbs of it any way. Sometimes we’d take the train into the city proper to shop, and go to authentic Japanese restaurants. Well, it was all new experiences for us.

We lived here for about two years, and we sure enjoyed it. There are so many things to remember about our time in Japan, but would take pages and pages to tell. We do have lots of photos, but they all have people in them – sorry, I don’t post them.

Next – back to the states and another house.

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Thanks for visiting! Peace ☮️

© 2021BS

Stream of Consciousness Saturday – Hope

Stream of Consciousness Saturday – Hope 

https://lindaghill.com/2021/07/09/the-friday-reminder-and-prompt-for-socs-july-10-2021/

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Your Friday prompt for Stream of Consciousness Saturday is “hope.” Use it any way you’d like. Have fun!

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Today for SOCS we have the prompt word ‘hope’. Thanks to Linda G. Hill for our Saturday word challenge. 🙂

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Hope … What’s to say besides the same old platitudes, nicey nice feel good quotes you see all the time. Sometimes it’s just a bit too sugar sweet.

Sure, it’s great to have hope, and most people I’m sure hope for something. Hope for good health, hope for love, hope for friends, hope for a good day, and hope for a better world.

All the wishing and hoping and praying for better days is just a way of thinking, and mostly won’t bring about the things you want. If you want something bad enough you have to get up and try for it, make changes if you have to, and most of all change your attitude from I can’t to I can.

Actually I’m not motivated to do all that, so I just keep wishing and hoping and praying and putting in barely any effort to bring it about. I just wait and see, and sometimes good happens, and other times it doesn’t.

I wasn’t going to write any of this, or really anything at all. I thought of just making up some funny meanings for the letters H O P E , like : Protein – High Octane People Energizer. That’s kinda funny.

Oh well, hope y’all are having a wonderful weekend!

Here’s a nice song about hope. ❤

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“Give Me Love (Give Me Peace On Earth), by George Harrison, was released from his album, “Living In the Material World”, in 1973. It was written by George Harrison, and is on the Apple label.

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Thanks for visiting! Peace ☮️

© 2021 BS