Monday, June 04, 2007


Did I ever tell you that it's been 40 years?

Yes, we moved to Columbus, Ohio 40 years ago this week. Hardly seems possible. For some reason I remembered that this morning on my way to the coffee shop, thinking I still feel like a visitor!

I was recruited in February 1967 at the University of Illinois by the personnel officer of Ohio State University Libraries to come as a Slavic cataloguer; he located a job for my husband with an architect he knew through church. The night we met Sam Calabretta (partner in that architectural firm), I fell in love with the idea of moving to Columbus. My husband was a bit more conservative and wasn't really sure it was right. But Sam was so upbeat about the possibilities here, we were soon sold on the idea. My job wasn't as good as the one I left, but my husband's was probably 10 times better. And since the children arrived soon afterward and I didn't return to work until 1977 in another position, it worked out fine.

On our job interviews in April, we found a lovely apartment at 2120 Farleigh Road in Upper Arlington. We didn't know we weren't in Columbus (it's a suburb), and after six months we bought a home about 5 blocks from the apartment and we lived there for 34 years.

Our apartment on Farleigh, 2nd from left

I didn't take many photos of the inside; this was at Christmas. We had that TV until the 80s. The wreath behind me was made from IBM cards and sprayed with gold paint--a very popular 1960s craft. We still have that chair and the dining room hutch in the back ground. I think we still use some of the x-mas decorations, too.

5 comments:

Ladybug Crossing said...

Great pix!!
Wonderful memory.
xo
LBC

Dancing Boys Mom said...

ah, the good old days, when we didn't feel we needed a new tv more often than we needed new socks. :-)

and 34 years in the same house. that's impressive. most i've ever done is 10.

Unknown said...

Thanks for your visit at MondayMemories.com; I enjoyed reading your story this morning, I hope to have a home with a warm history one day.

JAM said...

Great story and photos. I am sometimes so grateful that the photo bug hit me early, and that by the time I got married, I had some decent equipment and took lots of pictures over the years. It's so fun to look back at our first apartement, we were the first to live there in this then-new building in Fort Walton Beach, Fl.

Those IBM cards were used for much more than programming and operating their computers. I remember using them in crafts at school as a kid in the late 60s and early 70s.

Joan said...

I love the picture -- and I remember those wreaths. I still macrame decorations I made one year in the 70s.