The Beginning Years

I have long thought that it would be a fun project to go to the various places I've lived and take pictures of the houses, where possible, and the surrounding area. Today I thought of a similar project utilizing Google Maps. I decided not to include places I don't remember such as the first place I lived with my parents in McCloud, California, and Provo, Utah. I'm not even positive which house on Oak Street I lived in, for goodness sake. I've also not included the summers I spent with my Aunt Debby and David in Yreka, California, or my Uncle Robert, Aunt Julie, Jeannette, and Robert Lee in Enid, Oklahoma. I have many memories from each and although I stayed for an extended period of time, I didn't officially live in either place.

What I've done is taken at least two screenshots of each place I can remember living. There really isn't any rhyme or reason to them other than I was going for one of at least a 500 foot key at the bottom right and then another of 50. As you will notice, although I have several at 500, they are not the same. Likewise with those at 50.

Other than the brief stint in Provo, UT, while my dad attended a semester at BYU, I spent the first 18 years of my life in McCloud, California, and then moved to Mt. Shasta, CA for a couple of years. This is what they look like:

This is McCloud, California. You can see the high school, the elementary school, the street I did most of my growing up on. Just a little town in a very beautiful place. Notice all the green.

This is Oak Street. I'm not sure if I lived in the house in the middle of the image or the one just below it. Either way, we lived there until I was five and I had a wonderful sandbox by the stairs up to the back door. McCloud has alleys and that roadway you see between Oak and Hennessey is the alley way.

Qunicy. The three houses in the middle, at the time I lived there, were, top to bottom,  mine, my grandparents, and my 3rd grade teacher and her husband from whom I had chorus and band in 7th and 8th grades. He also taught them at the high school. When I was 17 and a senior in high school, I moved in with my grandparents for a few months. It was while living with Grandma and Papa that Alisha was born.

Then I moved to Mt. Shasta. Lots of green here, too. I don't think I ever really paid attention to how neat and orderly and north/south east/west so many of the streets are in Mt. Shasta.

As cities go, Mt. Shasta isn't bad. I mean, it has a wonderful park, one of the best outdoor stores, The Fifth Season, and it, like McCloud, resides in the foothills of Mt. Shasta the mountain.

Pretty much in the center of the picture part of the image is the apartment we lived in. We were above the manager which was nice because we were also very close to the laundry and play ground. From here, Alisha and I moved to Yreka. I'll cover that in the next post.

So  many memories. Goodness. That covers, with the exceptions noted at the beginning, the first twenty years of my life. Next will cover a shorter time span but two major moves.

After going to the trouble of moving all  my lovely screenshots from my laptop to my trusty R2D2 flash drive in order to play with them on Paint on the other laptop, I've decided that until I can use the Bamboo as more than a glorified mouse pad, I'm going to let these things be. The version of Paint on the other laptop is so ancient that it's just a little more effort than I feel I have the time to expend. Sooooo, I hope you enjoy my little forays into the past in spite of my lack of edited images.