219 Highland Ave neighborhood

the neighbors

Next door up the hill were the Rakers: they had three children, Joe, Peggy and Neal. I played with Joe who was my junior.

Next door down the hill were the Ernsts: They had several children, including a boy older than R, a girl in R's elementary school classes, and at least one other child.

At the bottom of the hill was a large empty lot containing a drainage area; it belonged to the next house where lived a woman Mrs Domminick and her two unmarried daughters. One of the women was named Estelle.

Across the street from the Dominicks, on the uphill side of the intersection with Lucerne, lived the Massmans. They had boxer dogs and sons.

The intersection featured mirror symetric cut stone entrance markers over a story high.

I remember nothing of the house on the other corner.

Across from the Ernsts, were originally the Beckmans (?). Mr Beckman originally recruited Dad to be the City Treasurer/Clerk.

Across from our house were the Collette's. The father owned a liquor store, which still exists in Erlanger and is still in the family. The oldest child, Richard (?), was one year ahead of me through Blessed Sacrament Elementary, Covington Latin School and then physics major at Villa Madonna College. There was a daughter Jeanette, then small chidren one of whom was Jimmie. Their house was built while we lived in the subdivision.

The next house up the hill was the Shepmans. Both sons were I believe older than I. Then came Pop Acre (?) who I never met. Then came the house of Dr Brennan, a dentist, who had a son. He died of cancer. The story was that in the early days of Xrays, he would hold the film in the patients with his fingers. Those old machines were very inefficient.

At the top of the hill were the Richardsons, who had a son Delton, with whom I played. I remember their back yard as ploughed and that there was a cherry tree on the right side of the house.

Across the street from them was an unmarried woman, Nellie Wallace, who had a son.

Coming back down the street there was a family called the Gronemans.

See: 219 Highland Ave, Ft Mitchell Ky

VMC

Villa Madonna College founded in Covington Ky in 1921 by the Sisters of St Benedict

now know as Thomas More College

See: .Sigma Alpha Lambda fraternity.   .VMC class of 1963 reunion 2013.   .VMC's libraries.

VMC's libraries

I arrived at VMC in September 1959. The library was the fourth floor of the old Benedictine convent on 12th St east of Scott, between the old St Joseph's elementary school at 12th & Scott and the old St Joseph's Church on the next corner.

The old convent, which contained administration offices on lower floors, was very old. It was slowly collapsing. The stairs were in the center of the floor. A marble dropped near the outer wall in the library on the fourth floor would roll to the center of the building, before rolling down the stairs.

In the early 1960s, the college took over an old Knights of Columbus Hall on the east side of Madison between 10th and 11th. Next to it on the north was a parking lot for the A&P grocery store on the corner of 10th and Madison.

One of the floors (the top?) was destined to be the new library. I remember the books were packed loosely in open-topped beer cartons (the old 24 long-neck bottle types) and brought the the A&P parking lot. An open construction elevator brought the boxes up to a window of the library. Students on the elevator handed them through the window to students inside. This was possibly the work of the Sigma Alpha Lambda fraternity.

I seem to remember there was a cafeteria on the next lower floor.

See: Alumni's Favorite Places on Campus

219 Highland Ave, Ft Mitchell Ky

This was the second of three places Vera and Andy Kuebbing lived. The first was a second floor apartment on Holman St in Covington, the third was 72 Greenbriar in Ft Mitchell.

They moved there in the late 1940s. I believe it was about the time T was born.

The house is small; one bedroom, one bath, the living room, the kitchen, and a small knotty pine paneled dining area on the first floor. The basement was unfinished; it contained a coal-fired furnance, later converted to gas. The coal was fed into the furnace by a worm-gear mechanism. Each morning dad would clean the "clinkers" from the fire. They were large agglomerations of burnt coal pieces.

I am guessing that the second floor was partly finished as a single long, narrow room when they bought the house. The stairs came up the middle, length-wise. Their was a small ceiling, and then slope of the roof came half way down to helf-height walls. There was sheetrock/plaster on these walls, sealing off the edges of the area. Each side had a small door leading into unfinished storage area.

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The house next door down the street (on the right) was owned and occupied by the Ernst family. (One of the males name was Ray.) They had a daughter my age.

When I was young, on a fall day, the Ernst house exploded in fire. My memory is that a pilot light went out. The gas filled the house until it found another working pilot light.

The flaming side of the house fell on our house, which caught fire.  That side and part of the roof burned.

The only other detail I remember is that Mother had been baking Christmas cookies.  She had several sheets of uncooked cookies.  She handed them out to the neighbors.  For decades afterward, she had a grudge that not all of the recipients thanked her afterward, and at least one had the temerity to criticize her cooking/recipe..

See also:
R's bike . 219 Highland Ave neighborhood . rak_0

R's bike

I didn't learn to ride a bike early.

After my father returned from service in the Army in the Pacific, we lived at 219 Highland Ave in Ft Mitchell Ky. It's on a hill.

My bike was a gift from my maternal aunt Gertrude. Trudy was know for being "penny wise and pound foolish." In this case she bought me an upscale adult bike - a light, a horn, mud flaps, incredibly heavy but no gears. It was the same metaphor as the automobiles of the era - we won the war, big and heavy is good.

I was/am less than completely coordinated. So an adult held the bike while I was getting on. Then ran down the hill with me as the bike coasted faster and faster. If I stayed on the bike and pumped my feet, I was immediately faced with an uphill.

Or we could walk up the hill toward Gertrude's house at 115 and the flat part of the street. Neither the adults nor I were that ambitious that often.