It was in Berkley, at 2508 Commonwealth Drive. Nancy and I had a new baby girl, Angelin, and we wanted to move from our dark, basement apartment across town into a real home. Caleb Stowe, our Realtor, found us a house in a nice subdivision with an assumable mortgage that we could afford, and we bought it.
That first house had three bedrooms, one bath, a combination living/dining area, a kitchen and a full, unfinished basement. What else would you need in a house? It cost $20,500 and our mortgage payment was $107 a month.
We only used the dining room for company. We ate all our meals in the very small kitchen. We had one phone on the kitchen wall. There was no such thing as a microwave oven. We cooked on the electric stove top or baked things in the oven. We had a refrigerator in the kitchen but splurged and bought an upright freezer from Sears, which we kept in the basement. It was the only thing in our basement. It would comfortably hold a half of a steer. There are a lot of chuck steaks, by the way, when you buy a half of a steer.
We had one TV with an antenna on the roof. We could get two stations on a clear day.
The house had a carport and a sloping driveway that our little Angelin loved. She would pedal her small tricycle to the top of the driveway and barrel her way down. The yard had a tall maple tree in the front yard, that she climbed like a monkey – as high as the power lines, but she was quite a climber, so we never really worried. The backyard was fenced, a perfect place for bird dogs. Behind the house was a grown up field, where Staples now occupies. There were two coveys of quail in that field and I trained my young Irish Setter, Dixie, on those birds.
Berkley was a quiet neighborhood with other modestly priced homes – the most expensive may have been in the upper twenties. There was a pool, sort of, for the community. They filled the basic concrete structure during summers, but we never had lifeguards, it was swim at your own risk. On the other side of the neighborhood was a nine-hole golf course, the current site of Four Seasons townhomes. The course was more like a goat farm than Augusta National, but it was a place to play. I believe the green fees were $5.
Commonwealth Drive was a long, gently sloping road, ideal for kids to sleigh ride. Cars in the neighborhood were well aware of the sledders, and gladly shared the road.
On weekends, we went to Lake Reynovia to swim, and occasionally we went to the drive-in movie where Kroger’s on Emmett Street is located. For a dollar, we could take the whole family. There were no McDonalds in town, but we had a place called the Biff Burger. They had great burgers and shakes, but it took a while to get your order. We paid cash or wrote a check for everything. There were no credit cards. Bank loans were done with a handshake. Young men helped customers get groceries to their cars and took the carts back themselves. Our doctor made house calls and the service attendant at the gas station always checked the air in your tires and the oil gauge.
To think, a home with everything we needed cost $20,500. You can’t buy a used truck for that today. The average price home in Charlottesville is now in the upper $300,000 range.
The houses may be bigger, they may have more bells and whistles, but those days long gone by and the memories of that first house are irreplaceable. Those were the very best of times.