I Didn’t Realize I’d Need That

In 1953, as part of the post-WWII Baby Boom, and resulting need for more and larger housing, my parents built a house. We’d been living in a duplex that had two good-sized rooms and a bathroom and a kitchen. I shared the bedroom with my parents. They built a house in a new development; it had a big living room, a nice-sized kitchen (it accommodated a table and chairs, where we ate all our meals, and a washing machine, in addition to the usual stove and fridge and cabinets), a bathroom, and THREE bedrooms. And it had an attached garage.

Here’s the house, the first summer we were there. Car’s in the driveway.

I don’t really remember the car ever being in the garage. Every photo I have that includes that side of the house shows the car in the driveway. I don’t recall getting in the car while it was in the garage. It seems to me that we were always getting in and out of the car while it was in the driveway. I don’t remember the garage being full of boxes of things. The only garage-related memory I absolutely have is of Mother and Daddy working to refurbish a dollhouse that had been handed down to us from older cousins. They painted the walls, cut new flooring, and attached pictures on the walls (cut from magazine photos). Then, ta-dah, for Christmas, I got dollhouse furniture and people. Beyond that, I can’t tell you what might have been in the garage. I just don’t think it was the car.

Almost all the homes in that area have single-car garages. It’s as though people at the time couldn’t imagine having two cars. At the same time.

In six short years, JoAnne had been born, taking up residence in the “spare” bedroom. And while my Mother had grown up in a home with several sisters, but only one bathroom, and my Dad had grown up in a house that had no indoor plumbing, in northern Ohio, if you can imagine (!), they thought they might need two bathrooms, now. And a den. And a two-car garage.

So they built another house. But the car/garage/driveway situation changed. Daddy always, always, always parked his car in the garage. Always (did I mention that?). All the neighbors did. In my memory, those first few years we lived there, almost all the Dads went to work (in their vehicles), and almost all the Moms stayed at home. Most families had only one car. The family who lived across the street from us had a Dad who went to work every day, driving off in the car. The Mom worked at a local toy store; she rode the bus to work (conveniently, the bus route ran up the main street, just half a block from their house).

Things have certainly changed.

Baby Boom parents built new houses. Wonderful new houses. Spacious new houses. And some of them quickly began to feel squeezed in, and enclosed their garages.

I’m imagining that Baby Boom parents didn’t realize how mobile their families members would become. How many vehicles there would be in the family. We were a one-car family until I was a senior in High School. By then, JoAnne was done with Elementary School and also needed to get to school a mile away, so Daddy bought a used Volkswagen. I drove JoAnne to the Jr. High and went on to the High School each day. And, since Mother still hadn’t learned how to drive, I had the use of the car all the time. It was great. When I graduated and went off to college, Mother had to learn how to drive. She did, but never felt really confident behind the wheel.

And both cars always got parked in the garage every night.

This is the only photo I can find of a car in the garage. There aren’t any pictures of the driveway, with or without vehicles. The VW is there, but the other side is empty. I suppose that Daddy had gone to work and Mother or JoAnne had gone out to get the good snowy day shot.

Garage space wasn’t a great issue. The cars were parked there. That was that. But, there were some places that Mother seemed to feel needed some extra help.

Sometimes it’s hard to know, when starting a project, large or small, what exactly is going to be needed. Careful planning, measuring, evaluating–all work together. But, occasionally, an unforeseen, unimagined, out-of-the-blue complication smacks us across the face. We adapt. Okay, I might weep a little bit. Then I adapt.