calherewecome

So, as I reflect on my brother’s passing this week, I was thinking about our time together. When we were all teenagers, we lived on 109 Anawan Ave in West Roxbury. With the help of Zillow I was able to see pictures of the house where we spent our teenage years.

We went from a house in Brighton that seemed to be getting more crowded by the day. So in our new house we all had our own bedrooms. We had a den upstairs where we could watch TV. There was a large dining room and formal living room on the first floor.

So here is the picture that I found on Zillow:

It looks remarkably well renovated. The listing says 4 bathrooms. When we lived there, there was but 1.5 baths. In my minds eye I tried to figure out where the new owners put all the new bathrooms.

My Mom and Dad’s room was on the second floor on the right-front. My room was in the back on the right side. Stan’s bedroom was on the third floor. His benefit was that my Mom and Dad didn’t want to go up there very much. The down side was the third floor got pretty hot in the summer. No AC in those days.

Stan had a pretty much private domain on the third floor. But, I used a room on the third floor for my ham radio station. My Mom wouldn’t there either for fear of getting electrocuted. She wouldn’t go in my room either, same reason.

Stan would stash cans of beer up there with no fear of getting caught. Downside was it was warm beer. Having a refrigerator up there would have been a huge tell.

On the first floor, left-front was the formal living room. We had a grand piano there. Eventually, we inherited a second upright piano that was stashed in the entry-way on the right.

I think that my Mom eventually sold the place circa 1975. My Dad died in 1968 and all the kids had moved on. Too much house for one person.

Our neighbors to the left were the O’Briens. Frank O’Brien was a mechanical engineering professor at MIT. He was the person who persuaded me to study electrical engineering.

The neighbors to our right were Dr and Mrs Wood. Anne Wood was a speech therapist like my mother. Nice people.

Another benefit was the house was on a bus route that ran to Green St. Station on the Orange Line (MBTA). We could all walk out of the house in the morning and get on the MBTA bus to school in Dorchester.

So Zillow says the value is set at $1.5 million. It recently sold in 2021 for about $1.3 mil. I don’t remember how much Mom and Dad paid for it but it wasn’t anywhere close to six figures. Unfortunately, Zillow doesn’t have any interior pictures. Click here for the Zillow link: