John's parents had a lifelong project of remodeling their residence. The garage to the right did not orginally exist, for example. Not satisfied yet, one big bedroom was added above the garage. Later, the bedroom was subdivided into two separate bedrooms. The front steps were not originally in front, but were actually on the left side of the house. They also tried to smooth out the shape of their ranch style house by redoing the entire roof.
The residence is a corner lot of Underhill Avenue and Overhill Street. In the botton right hand corer of our lot at the street intersection there was a giant maple tree hundreds of years old that towered over the lot while John lived there. But, over the years the old tree died. Was cut down and the 3 foot diameter stump eventually rotted completely away. John H. Gohde says that the yard simply does not look the same without that big old tree of his youth.
John remembers his mother planting a bunch of pine trees when he was in fourth grade, in the upper left corner of their lot. Those same trees are now over 75 feet tall. John's family lot was almost one acre in size. In high school John H. Gohde spent 3 hours, and then some, cutting the grass with a walk behind lawnmower every week. Raking the leaves was quite a chore.
John H. Gohde has many a memory of digging out the gravel driveway every time it snowed with a shovel, as a child. The city snow plows would cover up both ends of the driveway with mountains of snow three feet high, which he had to dig out along with his brother. You couldn't plow the 300 foot long driveway without digging up all the gravel. The driveway was not paved until the time of his mother's death.