Saturday Night Genealogy Fun -- Moving On Out

Calling all Genea-Musings Fans:

It's Saturday Night again -

time for some more Genealogy Fun!!

 Randy Seaver of Genea-Musing’s assignment this week:

Here is your assignment if you choose to play along (cue the Mission Impossible music, please!):

1.  Where did you go the first time you moved out of your parents home?  Did you have roommates? Did you live by yourself?  Did you get married right away?  Tell the story - your children and grandchildren will want to know!

2.  Share your story in your own blog post, in a comment on this post, or on Facebook.  Please leave a comment with a link to your post here.

I lived at home until I was about twenty-five. I had paid my way through college, but had the luxury of living at home. Luckily, what side jobs I had paid for the school fees and books and the transportation costs of BART rides and AC Transit busses.

I lived in Walnut Creek and attended California State University at Hayward, where I studied Biological Sciences and received my BS in 1977. When I first started in 1973, it cost about a dollar each way on BART and twenty-five cents to ride the bus from the campus back to BART. From BART, the bus ride was free with a token.

Following college graduation, I was scheduled to take additional classes for a geography major and would continue working in the library at the college. Then I got a tip for a job at a sporting goods store in Alameda on Park Street. I interviewed and got the office job. I immediately realized I didn’t like the job and started looking for something else. I interviewed for OCS with the U.S. Coast Guard, but did lousy. I tried getting a job with Pacific Gas and Electric Company as a mapper but they had no positions open. I interviewed with the Chevron Refinery in Richmond as a chemical cleaner coordinator. Very glad I didn’t end up there. Breathing all that bad air would not have been healthy. Lastly, I interviewed for a job with BART as a train operator.

I was hired in October 1978 and immediately found out our labor contract would be up in July and the union president told us to save our money. It didn’t seem prudent to move out into an apartment when I might be out of work in nine months. Well, we didn’t go on strike in July, but with poor labor negotiations, the district finally locked us out at the end of August. We were out for three months. The contract was finally settled the day before Thanksgiving.

The three months were tough at home. My dad was also out of work, though he started up a fruit stand in Hayward. I ended up helping him some. As soon as I was back to work, I began looking for an apartment. I needed to finally be on my own.

I found a two-bedroom apartment at 141 Flora Avenue, Walnut Creek. I didn’t have much furniture. I took my desk and bed from home. I bought some do-it-yourself furniture from either Simon’s Hardware or Cost Plus (not sure which). I might have bought a bookcase at an unfinished furniture store. The apartment was pretty empty.

I begged the owners to put in a deadbolt and chain on the door. I worked late nights and would sleep most of the day. Luckily most of my neighbors worked during the day. I remember having guests a few times and by now I was dating my future husband. One thing I do remember about the apartment, was how much it shook during a January 1980 earthquake that woke me up with a start. I thought a truck was driving into the carport wall directly under my apartment.

Just before we were married, I received a notice that the apartment was converting to condos. The photo below is from Google Street View. I have no photos taken of the place at all. My apartment was on the floor above the carport.

141 Flora Ave, Walnut Creek (north side)

This was the only year I lived on my own. I’ve been married forty years and have lived in the same house since.

Copyright © 2020 by Lisa S. Gorrell, My Trails into the Past. All Rights Reserved.