Monday, January 02, 2006

 

Twenty-Seven?!?! (No, TSA, Not In A Row.....)

To this point in my life, I've lived in 26 different residences. I grew up in a military family, but I can't blame my transient nature on that. My dad got to his final military assignment when I was in second grade. He retired from Ellsworth, AFB and bought a home in nearby Box Elder when I was in high school. My folks have been in that home ever since. After four years of living with them there, I went off to college. It seems I've been moving ever since......

Residence #1 was a small house in Austin, Texas. I was born at nearby Bergstrom, AFB (now the Austin airport) in 1965. My parents had been there for quite a while. I remember nothing of living in Texas.

Residence #2 was a house in Orlando, Florida. There was an Air Force base in the area then. Dad was stationed there, but spent most of his time TDY in Guam. My mom, sister and I lived there. We were right across the street from an orange grove that our landlord owned. We could take oranges any time we wanted. There was a small orange tree in the back yard. It had never produced fruit until we tied our dog to it......

Residence #3 was on my grandparents' farm outside of Howard, South Dakota. We were staying there before heading off to Guam from Florida. It was a couple of months that we were there, my sister actually started school at Howard Elementary.

Residence #4 was off-base military housing on the US Territory of Guam. I can't think of a better place to be a four year old. It was absolutely amazing. We had a coconut tree in our back yard and were pretty much surrounded by jungle. We lived on Guam from 1969-1970, and though World War II had been over for 25 years when we left, there were still a few Japanese soldiers on the island who thought the war was still going on.

Residence #5 was in Sunnymead, California. Dad was stationed at March, AFB. Having lived in SoCal since then, I found that the area is known as the 'Inland Empire.' It's hot and smoggy in the summer. It was surrounded by mountains that were nearly invisible due to the poor air quality. I started Kindergarden at Sunnymead Elementary School. We purchased our favorite family pet, a cocker spaniel mix at the Sunnymead Pet Shot, which, ironically was in neighboring Edgemont. While driving to Vegas from Long Beach a few years ago, I thought I'd try to find the old house. I got off of the freeway, and though it had been 30 years since I'd been there, I drove right to it.

Residence #6 was in Howard, South Dakota. Dad was sent to Thailand for a year and though he could have taken the whole family, chose not to. My mom had grown up in the area and we had lots of family around. It was a nice little town, I guess, but since I had lived other places, I never really fit in.

Residence #7 was right across the street from #6 which we were renting when it was sold to a teacher at the high school. My mom had no idea what we were going to do. She didn't really want to move back in with the grandparents. A nice old woman who lived across the street died and we were able to rent the place for the rest of the time dad was overseas.

Residence #8 was 9927C Lead Drive, Ellsworth, AFB, South Dakota. I was just finishing up second grade when we moved. Due to Federal cutting of something called 'Impact Aid,' the Douglas School System shut it's door about two weeks after I started school there. I ended up going to Zion Lutheran School in Rapid City. I still blame attending 3 different school in second grade for my lousy handwriting. Dad retired from the Air Force in 1979, just as I was finishing junior high. So....
Residence #9..... they bought a house just east of the base. They still live there and it's paid for. It was the first home my parents ever owned, having lived in a string of rentals since dad joined the Air Force. I still look on the place with a great deal of pride. It's one thing in my life that has been somewhat permanent.

Residence #10 was 314 Mickelson Hall on the campus of the University of South Dakota. I actually kept that room for my Freshman and Sophomore years. All in all, a nice place. I sometimes get hits on this blog from Mickelson Hall. THIRD FLOOR REPA-SENT, YO!!!!!

Residence #11 The moves come pretty fast and furious now. 211 Center Street #3 was my first apartment ever. It was really close to downtown which was nice, and not to far from campus. Another nice place though the kitchen was pretty small.

Residence #12 was 2 1/2 East Main #3 in Vermillion. I was above my favorite bar which was adjacent to the video store and if I went down the fire escape it was less than 100 steps to the liquor store. I didn't have enough money for a phone or cable TV, but in truth I really just slept there. It was an efficiency, but it was huge, I had two couches that folded out, and I could actually fold them out at the same time!

Residence #13 was at #38 Elms Apartments in Vermillion. I moved in with my girlfriend who I later made the mistake of marrying. Shortly after getting married, we moved to.....

Residence #14 ......#28 Elms Apartments. It was still a one bedroom, but it was quite a bit bigger. While living there, I got a job in Sioux Falls. I commuted for a couple of months, the 65 mile one way commute pretty much destroyed my 1981 Chevy Citation (easily the crappiest car I ever owned, and I had a 1974 Ford Pinto!). So yet another move was in my future.

Residence #15 was just off of Russell Street in Sioux Falls. It was near the airport which made the ex-wife unable to sleep at night. Having grown up near airplanes all of my life, I found it kind of comforting actually.

Residence #16 was off of Westport Ave. in Sioux Falls. It was ridiculously close to KDLT-TV where I was working at the time. I did videotape for the 10pm news, if I had everything together, I could actually be home before the start of Johnny Carson. Our news end-break was 94 seconds in lenght.

Residence #17 was in Vermillion again, in fact it was in Elms Apartments again. I separated from the ex while living at #16, and since I was unemployed at the time, I spent a couple of months living with my folks. I got a job with SD Public TV in April of 1991. It was weird living in the same apartment complex I lived in when I was married, but I got over it.

Residence #18 was with a friend in Vermillion. He owned a house on the west side of town. As an added bonus, his family was in the beer distribution business in Minnesota, so I drank a whole lot of beer while living there. We built a really cool little bar in the breezeway between the house and the garage and it sort of became the hangout for the 'cool' people at SDPTV.

Residence #19 was in the basement of the Super 8 Motel in Vermillion. The friend in the beer business moved onto another gig, I found this place. Actually it was great. It was another efficiency, but I got to use the motel pool and I had the cable TV package that they had in the rooms at no cost to me. It was also really controlled access, so I could duck people whenever i wanted....

Residence #20 was a two bedroom apartment in Forest City, Iowa. I was working for Cycle Sat, Inc., a division of the Winnebago corporation. Nice place, two levels, I had a grill out the back door. Pretty cool place to live, too bad I really didn't care much for the town, even if it was probably the best job I ever had.

Residence #21 was in Cottage Grove, Minnesota. I had moved back to Rapid City on extremely short notice, starting up a new TV station. I probably couldn't even have taken that job if I hadn't been able to live with my folks. The job was really shitty and I only stayed in the RC 8 months that time before taking a job with USSB in the Twin Cities. I was living with the guy in the beer business again. So I started drinking a lot again. The place was OK, a pretty big complex, over-priced and further from work than I would have liked.

Residence #22 was in White Bear Lake, Minnesota. I was still working at USSB when the beer guy and I decided to change places. I really liked this place, right on a little lake, a really short drive from work. I was sitting in a control room at USSB when, for the first time, I counted the number of places I had lived. I came up with 22, I was 33 years old. That's an average of 18 months per residence over my lifetime. I ended up staying in White Bear Lake for 18 months.

I stayed in Residence #23 exactly 18 months as well. A little place in Long Beach, about 7 blocks from the beach. I really liked it, it was quiet and somewat difficult for others to find. It got sold while I was living there and I had a pretty short amount of time to find someplace else to live.

Residence #24 was a condo I lived in with a guy I worked at both USSB and DirecTV with. It was a good fit as we were both midwesterners who just couldn't believe all of the bullshit we had to deal with in SoCal. Still, it was a nice place to live.

After losing my job at DirecTV, 5-55 found Residence #25 for me. I was romantically involved with 5-55 having gotten together when I was home visiting for Christmas one year. It was going well enough that I thought a move was in order. We had a fight on my first day back in town. Other than helping me move in some, she was only in the place with me once.

Residence #26 is a very nice trailer in a park in Rapid City. I think I'd really like living there, but I'm moving on to Cheyenne in two weeks. It's really weird to move all your stuff from one place to another and try to only unpack the bare essentials.

Tomorrow I'm heading to Cheyenne, trying to find Residence #27. I'm 40 years old, #27 will put me a little ahead of my 18 months per residence average in my lifetime.

BOJ

Comments:
Very impressive. I think I've got you beat. Can I count the tent on the beach and the space under the bridge?
 
Count away, but remember I didn't really count all of mine either. I stayed in a hotel in Long Beach for a month before I found my first place there. Got free meals and junk too!
 
Free meals and junk. I'm not even gonna try to compete with that. I usually just got shot at. Dang I hate that.
 
Considering the company that put me up in that place treated me generally like a piece of crap, free food and board was a pretty good deal! Sometimes I bad mouth people and organizations without remembering the good things they've done for me.
 
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