I was looking at some of our old haunts in Anaheim on the Internet the other day and was struck by how small they look. When we were children, of course they looked much larger and different. The most striking was our old house on S. East St. I had to really look at it to see that it was indeed our old house. It wasn't until I sort of correlated the front door to the living room window and the window of the front bedroom that I was able to recognize it. The large apartment building on Rose that is connected to the property next door to our old house seems to dwarf any house around it for sure. But look at Arnie's old house! The gas station on the corner of Broadway and East St. looks nearly identical to what it looked like back in the day. Lincoln Elementary is not recognizable. And for a real shock, check out what used to be the old Tastee Freeze across the street from Anaheim High on the corner of Citront and Lincoln. Talk about going ethnic. Oh What? When I was a junior at Anaheim, it was owned by a guy they called Peanut and he was Bob Purcell's uncle.

The Browns' old house on Chestnut (top row second picture - not labeled) looks smaller as well but it is not as well taken care of.

Looking at the picture of the south east corner of Broadway and Anaheim Blvd. it's hard to imagine that it used to be the Flying A station that Brownie and Ernie Bashara used to own. It is now the parking lot for the Hilgenfeld Mortuary which is still there and apparently doing quite well.

The little store looks about the same as it did all those years ago but it's decidedly more ethnic now. I would have included a picture of the Dunton's house but it was torn down many years ago and now town houses occupy that entire block on that side. And Charlie Martin's old house looks pretty much the same but the alleys that criss cross our old neighborhood are very nice now and paved in concrete rather than just dirt with old asphalt chunks here and there.

I thought I'd throw in some pictures of Bebo's house just because I had them even though it's not in Anaheim. Bebo's house also looks smaller but certainly a lot cleaner and better kept since the last time I saw it. At that time, (I believe it was in 1998 or so that mom and I drove over to see it) it had turquoise painted eaves and was pretty trashy. At least it's cleaned up now. If you'll look at the picture from the angle of Orient Ave. you can see they have a forced air conditioner unit in back. That was there when I saw it last. They must have dropped the ceiling to add ducts for it.

Click on any thumbnail to bring up the full sized picture.