Greene Street - The Second Floor

Here is one more attempt for me to recreate our house on Greene Street from memory and without photos. Now the second floor. There was no attic so I won't have that to write about and I'll probably do one more for the backyard.

So the second floor... walked up the stairs and headed down to the end of the hall to the backroom which was my parents room overlooking the backyard. For many years there was an air conditioner in that back window. Towards the end of our time in that house my parents had gotten a second television set that was in their room. The AC and the second TV made that room a priority sometimes. There was a dresser on the right, a bed in the middle of the room. There was a chair all the way on the left wall next to a window where mom sat with the babies. Behind the chair was a door into the next room that was never used. There was also a large closet with sliding doors near the chair.

The next room was the girls room for Betsy, Cathy and Rita. There was also another door there to the bathroom that was also never used. It was odd that the room had three doors that included one to the hallway, one to the front room and one to the bathroom but I don't think there was a closet.

Then there was the bathroom. Very small. I mostly used the bathroom in the basement with the shower that my father installed. This bathroom was mostly for our parents and the girls.

The next room was very small and is where me and Tom slept. At one point we had bunk beds in there. Later Betsy would have that room for herself.

The front room overlooking the street was the largest bedroom in the house. For many years this is where our great-grandparents Nana and Grandpop Morris slept. Tom and Ada Morris stayed with us in our home for about eight years until the early 60's. They were in a nursing home and passed away shortly after Danny was born.

After they moved out me and Tom moved into that room and were later joined by Danny. We had a double bed and Dan had a crib in there for many years followed by a youth bed. 

Betsy at that time moved into our little room that she had for her own and Cathy and Rita shared the other room.

A little story about the stairs. They were a long set of stairs down to a landing which then turned at a right angle into the living room. The wall along the stairs had wallpaper that was significantly worn where all the kids dragged their hands down the wall as they came down the steps. When someone was coming down the steps Dad would shout out to whoever to stop sliding their hand on the wallpaper. One of the kids would always ask how did he know which of course he knew because it always happened that way but he would quickly pull a small tape measure out of his pocket and exclaim that he had a special device that told him when one of his children dragged their hands on the wallpaper. We believed that magical device for a long time and later when I figured it out I didn't let on with the younger kids what that thing in his pocket really was.