After the 1964 Alaska earthquake, when our land was officially declared unlivable (though nowadays there are four lots out there, being lived on by four families--I wouldn't be, though!), and we were granted a lot in the new town because of that, we started building a new house. My dad was a cabinetmaker, but he was GREAT at building full houses.
Out in the country, when I was still little, we'd lived in a variety of small homes--even smaller than that apartment (one of the places in Valdez, Alaska was an old, 20x20 military tent with a plywood floor, plywood half-walls that my dad built for it, a combination wood cookstove/heating stove, and cots), but for several years before the quake we'd been in a three-bedroom home (created from what was initially our chicken coop), with LOTS of space (though with no running water until about the year before).
After the quake, when everyone was back to living in the old town where most of the homes had been utterly destroyed, the city brought in a bunch of single-wide mobile homes. We rented one of those. It wasn't TINY, but for a family of six, it also wasn't very large. It did have three bedrooms. Mom and Dad had the biggest one, which barely had room for a double bed. Our kids' rooms were big enough for built-in bunks the walkway coming through the door, and built-in closets with drawers underneath. You could barely turn around in the walk-in space. If someone was sitting on the bottom bunk, you had to ask them to move, before you could get anything out of the drawers.
In the new town, Daddy first built what later became his workshop. It was totally open living except for the one small bathroom. He built some half-wall partitions between the kids' "room," the kitchen, and the "master bedroom." I'll build it for us, too. It was in the shape of a T, floorplan-wise, with the small living room being the stem of the T.
The house that he then began to build was much fancier, with two stories, three very large bedrooms, and two bathrooms. I never got to live in that house. I married my now-ex-husband, and we moved into a tiny travel trailer. Later, we lived in a string of trailer homes and small apartments. I never lived in a large house until David and I got married, and even then, our kids were sharing bedrooms. We lived in a fairly large house in Aberdeen, Washington, but here we are back to a small house, which is cozy for just David, Jonny, and me, but put just one more person in here, and it's pretty crowded!
The only times I've ever had a room completely to myself was after David and I had already been married 20 years, and he decided he couldn't sleep with my apnea keeping HIM awake, and now, again, here, now that I've finally moved into Mom's room (it was a little over a year after her move to a care facility when Jonny first was here, that he got it painted and ready for me).
So I totally understand your living arrangements back then, Melody. I wasn't aware that anyone else had shared my types of growing up experiences with small living areas! HIGH-FIVE!
