In August, 1963, we moved back to Atlanta in order for James to attend the Cerebral Palsy School near Emory University. We bought a brand new brick home with full basement in a new subdivision in Decatur, GA. We had 3 bedrooms, 2 baths, den, living room and kitchen.
The basement had windows on the side and walk-out on the back. It provided a place for storage and for the kids to play ping pong and other indoor activities and for rainy and cold weather play.This new home also provided a place for us to learn landscaping! We had a big yard with a creek at the back of our property where the boys enjoy playing in the thick woods. They built a tree house over the creek and posted a "no girls allowed" sign on it. They were really upset once after returning from vacation and finding the tree house filled with dolls and other girl stuff! The neighbor girls had been enjoying playing there.
The boys could walk up to the hill to the school. This new house had a one car carport (1963). This was before the 2-car families. By the time we left this home in 1967, all of the homes in the new subdivision had been built and sold. We enjoyed living at 3395 Tulip Drive even though the streets all had flower names. This photo shows the house in Sept 1964, one year after we moved in. Pictured are Carolyn Wilson, my youngest sister and our sons James, Bill and Ronnie.
A visit back to the area in 1987 was interesting. The neighborhood was "trashy" and there were junk cars in the yards, and homes were not kept up. The only bright spot were the trees we planted had grown to be very big. A pine on the left in the front yard (almost out of the photo) was our live Christmas tree in 1964 and we planted it outdoors after Christmas. The 3 hardwood trees in the center of the yard were so small we brought them home in the trunk of our Renault car!
We went back to our former jobs; Jim returned to the Arrow Shirt Co near East Point (southwest of Atlanta) and I went back to work at CDC, part-time.
James, 7 years old, was enrolled in the first special education class in DeKalb Co. and the school was in Tucker, GA, near Stone Mountain. Ronnie was in the 3rd grade at Peachcrest Elem. school. Bill entered kindergarten at Story Brook Day Care.
Our neighbors, Jack and Dee Fields and their kids on Tulip Drive moved to Dallas a couple of years after we moved to Paris, TX in 1968 and we had fun visiting each other in Texas.
