Married Student's Housing - UCB Well here we are, my little family of four, all settled in to our cozy 500 square foot, two bedroom, one bath apartment that we shall call home for the next two and a half years. Actually the picture is of some of the newer built units.
Our unit was part of the original U.S. Navy military housing built during World War II, at that time it was called Veterans' Village. Later it housed ship builders and even later became a Federal Housing Project for workers coming into the crowded Bay Area. The University, which was also growing at this time, purchased the Veterans' Village of Albany in 1956 that contained 420 units and it became University Village, or as we all called it Married Student Housing.
I guess the architectural styling could best be called barrack-style. The building were two story, four units up and four units down, all placed neatly in rows with grass and sidewalks between each building.
In one bedroom the two kids slept in a bunk bed, which gave them a small space to play in their room, when they were not outside running and playing with the hundreds of other children that lived in the Village. We had a king size bed which took up much of the ten by ten "master bedroom". But hey, the good thing was once you stepped in to the room you were in bed.
The kitchen/eating and living room were kind of one room really with no wall or door separation. But it all worked. There was space for Dick to study and me to type up his papers. The kids seemed happy and not wanting. We had plenty of room for the frequent bridge games we had with other married students.
And the really great thing was the rent was only $46 a month. After are six months in Oakland paying the high rent this was fantastic. We could actually afford to go to a movie or go bowling occasionally.
The village itself had some nice extras. Just across the street from our place was the Albany Rec Center, kids a bit older than ours could wander over on their own to play basketball or do crafts or just hang out. For me having the Albany Day Care Center located just down the street was an extra benefit. I had a job for awhile and I could leave both of the kids there for about $5 a week, which included a hot meal along of tender care. Before we left the village Susan reached school age and the day care center would see that all the children got to and from school safely.
Many times in our lives we would look back on the Berkeley years and would remember them fondly. These were some of the best years of our life. And until 9/11 those memories would also evoke also one of the saddest times.
I remember dropping Dick off at the campus and returning home to the Village. I was getting ready to do my ironing. When I turned on the television I discovered a very distraught Walter Cronkite trying to tell us what had just happened in Dallas. President Kennedy had just been shot!
But some of the happy memories I keep from our time there is the one of Susan becoming a Brownie, the Albany Easter Parade were Mark and Susan won first prize (a shiny silver dollar each), me arguing about the theory of relativity with a soon-to-be PhD. candidate in Physics .
Hm-mm seems some things never change.
No comments:
Post a Comment