I have only a very few photographs from the 60's of the front of our house on Cypress--I managed to find the top one which shows the house next door still there and the magnolia tree recently planted--so this was likely taken after October 1964, but not much later. In the contemporary photo, as you can see, there's a fence/wall surrounding the entire property, a gate for the driveway, and bars on the windows. It looks like a fortress today, not at all as it looked when we lived there.
When we moved in that June of 1964, we had a much different tree out front. It was large and shady with a thick trunk. It kept the front of our house cooler in summer. Unfortunately, though, the large roots had buckled the sidewalk in front. That fall, the city cut that beautiful old tree down, ripped up its offending roots, and replaced it with the magnolia tree that still stands--which took forever to grow and never did provide the kind of shade the old tree did. They also repaved the sidewalk. I applied the date of Oct. 10, 1964, and wrote my name in the wet cement. So did Mike Leonard. And those personal markings remained in the sidewalk until the wall/fence was added, sometime in the 2000's, I believe. when they also ripped up the sidewalk and replaced it.
Over the years, I was pleased to see that our handiwork in the sidewalk managed to survive for at least 30 years, perhaps longer. Then it was all gone as if we never lived there.
The only advantage for me with the shady tree gone out front was that I could watch the planes that flew directly overhead disappear beyond the horizon. Without even going outside, I could tell when the daily National Airlines DC-8 flew overhead. They flew lower, and louder, than any of the other aircraft. We'd already gotten used to tuning out the jets flying overhead at all hours of the day or night on Orchard, and they almost never disturbed our sleep on Cypress either.
After the old woman from Germany died in the small house that used to be on the left, she willed her home to our landlord, who used to mow her lawn every week for her. He sold the house, pocketed the pure profit, and the developers to whom he sold the house tore it down and built the apartment building that is still there. The city only allowed them to build four units, to correspond to the number of on-site parking spaces in back; however, the building was designed so that when the inspection was complete, the builder sent crews back in to seal off sections that were already designed to be separate units. The building then had six units, three per floor, and so not nearly enough places to park, except on the street.
A couple of years later, when I was returning home from church one Sunday, I happened to glance up to the second floor at the small porch that lead into the living room of that front apartment. The door was wide open and an attractive young man was just standing inside the door, in profile, totally naked. He stood there looking at me, and I continued to stare up at him as I walked along. I never saw him again, but I always wondered if I had simply waved at him that something further might have happened.
The house on the other side was also owned by an old woman who also died while we lived there. She was much less friendly than the German woman. Her house was sold to a young woman who's ex-husband or boyfriend would get drunk and sometimes become abusive. He'd chase her outside, often in the middle of the night, and wake us up. Mom yelled out her window one night, to tell them to knock it off. Yet the stupid younger woman told mom to shut up and mind her own business even though the guy was slapping her around and she was crying out.
There is a small house in back of ours on the same lot. An old woman and her older son lived there. They kept to themselves and didn't bother us, though I think they both had an overt pension for drinking at all hours, though they were quiet.
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