Flashback to Our 1976

We have made the move to our temporary housing and it has brought back a lot of memories of a little house we rented three years into our marriage.  I suppose I say that more because of a feel to the place rather than any actual physical similarity.  Our Airbnb vacation rental is one side of a duplex located about a block from an edge of the Belle Meade Country Club golf course.  It is in a VERY nice area, adjacent to a great area.  It was built in 1940 and has some quirky modernizations like a toilet room right next to the original bathroom and the associated sink located in a bedroom down the hall.  It has a small kitchen with new cabinets and countertops but without a garbage disposal or a dishwasher.  

It has a cute little dining room and a strangely large living room.  There are two comfortably sized bedrooms.

The duplex is centered on a half acre lot so there is a large fenced backyard that the dogs love.  It’s perfectly comfortable and has everything we should need for the 6 weeks we will be here, even if it is a bit of a back to basics place.

And the place it reminds me of is a two-on-one-lot 2 bedroom, one bath house we rented in 1976.  The two houses on the lot were both built sometime around 1950 with one on the front of the property and one on the back.  We were renting the back house which came with fencing all around and three or four well established fruit trees.  It wasn’t anywhere near a golf course and was in an okay, but not great, area which befitted the amount of rent we could afford to pay.  Nothing much had been done to that house in the 25 years of its existence.  It had all the basics one was understood to need in 1950 Southern California.

And somehow, to me, these two properties, separated by 2,000 miles and 40 years, evoke a similar feel. Maybe it’s something about the light or the ascetics of the 1940s and 50s.  Or maybe it is some mental state created by having only just what is needed.  Whatever it is, there is something pleasant about the time-faded memories that seem to drift about the Airbnb place.