I'm trying to think of people I know with that kind of stability and not coming up with any. It boggles the mind.
eekbeat and I have toyed with the idea of buying an ancestral home (her side) in PEI. It's only like $60K (Canadian), but we have other plans.
One of my friends lives in his parent's house, except his parents still own it.
I just found out that two friends who I went to elementary school with, and who started dating in grade 7 are still together, and now engaged. Imagine being with the same person since you were 12. yes, TWELVE. Geez Loueez! How's that for stability?
ben just wants me out of the country. What a jerk.
Also, every time we drive by the house I grew up in, in Chicago, my mom cries. So we don't drive by there anymore. It was a really old house, built in the bustle after the Great Chicago Fire.
Out of the country, in country, whatever—Stanley, I just plain want you.
8 sounds like a good way to minimize unwanted visits.
3 could be fleshed out by adding that both of his parents live in different states (though are still married), he has been making gobs of money since high school, and another of my friends, who has a pretty nice job of his own, lives with him (and not in a relationship-y sort of way).
I went by my childhood home on Friday. Previous visits have been depressing, but this time there's actually someone fixing it up nice and planning to live in it. It's someone we hate, but it's still nice to see the house and yard being kept up.
We still have an ancestral home, too. I'll presumably inherit it (along with my sister). I may end up doing something with it; it's in a very isolated location, but comes with a lot of land.
Stanley, I just plain want you
So little ben; so much time.
My girlfriend is being offered either of two apartments currently inhabited by aging relatives in the very same building as her parents, where she grew up.
The creepiness of such stability weighed against a guaranteed apartment in New York makes for a very tough decision.
I can only presume that the UK commenters will soon chime in about their ancestral castles. Bastards. All we have are fucking balloon-frame bungalows.
The creepiness of such stability weighed against a guaranteed apartment in New York makes for a very tough decision.
Seriously? New York seems like a special case when it comes to this sort of thing.
Seriously? New York seems like a special case when it comes to this sort of thing.
Consider how living two floors above your protective, Italian Catholic parents in an apartment formerly inhabited by your grandmother may negatively affect the young twenty-something New Yorker fantasy.
I'm telling her it's a no-brainer, but then I'm not a very sentimental person and my family is disintegrated.
Consider how living two floors above your protective, Italian Catholic parents in an apartment formerly inhabited by your grandmother may negatively affect the young twenty-something New Yorker fantasy.
I guess, but still, guaranteed apartment. I could probably arrange something similar for myself in Philadelphia, and I would definitely try to do it if I were to move there. Of course, my mom would be far away, so it's not quite comparable.
A few years ago, I drove through a town where I'd lived until my 12th birthday but hadn't visited since, and stopped to see our old house. I was on my way back West after seeing my dad for the last time (he was sick, and died the next week), and I arrived at the house the day after the current owners had cut down an enormous old cedar next to the garage, a tree that was fixed in my memory of the place. The cut-up trunk lay all over the driveway. That house was the most amazing place to be a kid.
I could probably arrange something similar for myself in Philadelphia, and I would definitely try to do it if I were to move there.
I'm trying not to read this as implying that you've been considering ways to eliminate your aged relative and inherit his/her house, but that reading is just so plausible.
I'll presumably inherit it (along with my sister).
Primogeniture's a good thing.
I'm trying not to read this as implying that you've been considering ways to eliminate your aged relative and inherit his/her house, but that reading is just so plausible.
The aged relative is long gone. The arrangements would involve talking to the current owner of the house, who doesn't live there, about whether I could stay there long-term.
Primogeniture's a good thing.
Yeah, if only my mom weren't so obsessed with being fair to both of us.
Let me try that again:
I'll presumably inherit it (along with my sister).
And maybe someday, you can pass her along to your children.
I just got had an e-mail exchange with my mom, indicating that she was up for the day and that I should sleep. Crazy. Good night, all.
re: 15
I used to know a guy who owned a castle*. However, it was basically a ruin and he'd bought it himself with his RAF pension [he'd been a Swordfish pilot in WWII].
Other than that, there's only one person in my entire immediate family [an uncle] that even owns a house at all.
* as that picture shows it was a ruin, but he did live in it and spent his entire life fixing it up.
I know a Habsburg from a family that lost their Dalmatian castle in 1945 or so. Prospects of regaining it are pooot. My Habsburg friend is, in fact, an ugly-looking guy with bad health and a very prominent jaw.
I just found out that two friends who I went to elementary school with, and who started dating in grade 7 are still together, and now engaged. Imagine being with the same person since you were 12. yes, TWELVE. Geez Loueez! How's that for stability?
Same story, with a small twist: I stopped being friends with my best friend in 9th grade because I found her boyfriend so annoying. We all eventually moved to Austin, and he's not so bad now, and their kid is adorable.
I stopped being friends with my best friend in 9th grade because I found her boyfriend so annoying.
Clarification: it was not abrupt or traumatic. We drifted apart in high school. But he was a contributing factor on my end.
My family has an ancestral estate, of sorts, that is pretty old by U.S. standards (it has been in the family since the late 1700's). My father was too far down the chain to inherit any of it (damned primogeniture!), but he acquired an adjacent property, and he is close to the brother who inherited the original, so I had the feeling of being rooted in that land when I was growing up. The institutions of that community, such as they were (the church, the old school house, the graveyard), are all carved out of the ancestral property. Unfortunately, my ancestors weren't far-sighted enough to settle in, say, the Hamptons, so the monetary value of the property is modest. Nevertheless, the place still has a pretty powerful hold over my psyche.
Imagine having a 500 year old estate in Newfoundland, with the ancestral family hut.
So there's Kind Hearts and Coronets and Donald Westlake's The Axe, but has anyone ever written a comedic novel or script in which someone merrily poisons a lot of people in order to get a rent-controlled pre-war in Manhattan?
19 - Holy crap, you grew up in a Jane Langton book.
I call shenanigans. #19 is from a Christmas card. He just photoshopped out Santa, Rudolph, Donder, Blitzen, Grumpy, Sneezy, Queequeg, Balthazar, and the rest of them.
re: 36
A 1000 year old estate in Newfoundland would be cooler.
Yes, my ancestors came over on the Islendingur. Unfortunately, the family place at L'Anse Aux Meadows is a bit run down.
My family has a place south of Charlottesville that has been in the family for a relatively long time. (great, great grandparents.)
My dad used to spend summers there as a boy.
I doubt it will make it through the next generation without being cut up.
My great-great-grandfather's brewery in Sioux City Iowa still stands. It's enormous and still has a bar in it.
JMcQ, that's the kind of house I want!
I've posted a photo of the Ruprecht ancestral estate mentioned in 34. It should be viewable by the unfogged Flickr group. It's not a great photo, just something I found with an image search.
There have been relatives of mine living in an apartment in Shubra since the forties. Rent has stayed stable, jumping a few years ago from 3 LE (approx $0.50) to 7.
Sioux City Prohibition Wars. Alas, it turns out that my great-great-grandfather was not involved, even indirectly.
Sioux City's abandoned breweries are an Urbex magnet.
Can't find a picture of the brewery, though.
My wife has fairly well known ancestors, there is an ancestral house they've thought about getting except that an equivalent next door sold recently for about $12 million. Can't say more detail without losing pseudonymity, but I'm certain one could find a picture of it through image search.
Speaking of ruining pseudonymity, my wife and I have been together since we were 16 & 17 respectively.
Some guy emailed us once, his dad had just died and the guy was looking up stuff from his dad's childhood and we live in the house where his dad grew up. Either that or he was from Nigeria and wanted us to send him the deed.
Also, this post reveals your librul biases. Even around Boston, once you get out of the high-tech / academic communities, a lot of people stay in the same town as there parents. Think former manufacturing towns.
My ancestral home is in fracking Whitehorse. I think it's been declared a historical landmark of some sort; the plumbing doesn't work.
My mother's engaged in an inheritance dispute over the ancestral one room stone cottage with attached peat bog in County Clare near Limerick, or rather over her one eighth share of it. I'm not expecting much to come of this.
My aunt moved into my grandmother's house after she died. She remodeled it in such a way that I would find it beautiful anywhere else, but in my grandmother's house I keep expecting there to be a wall where there isn't one.
My cousin bought her first house from my uncle. I suspect she may have paid $1.
shivbunny will inherit a couple farms.
My parents are still in the house they bought when I was seven. I expect it will be sold when they die. No way to split it four ways otherwise.
I can't get over how many late middle aged folks I know still have dependant kids in their late 20's and mid 30's. Usually they are still living at home or still require some kind of financial support cos they are 'between jobs'. Several of these parents have very little left in the way of assets to support themselves when they retire.
It weren't like that when I were a lad......
Cala: If anyone in the family actually wants the house, one of the siblings can get a bank loan to buy it from the others, using their own 1/4 as a down payment.
That's we did, and it worked pretty well. There was quite a bit of tension about the price, though: 3 of us wanted to give the buyer a special deal at $50,000, whereas two wanted to ask market value of $70,000 plus. We compromised on the bottom end of market value, which is a good thing since prices have declined.
We have a farm (used to be 100s of acres, now down to 40, but with the original 1820s brick house and stately front lawn) that's been in the family since 1815 or so in southwestern Ohio. My aunt's there now, but the next generation is scattered across the country. I don't think any of us will want to move to small-town Ohio, so it'll probably be sold when my Mom and her sister die.
51: I think it shows how much the economy has changed.
51, 54: Indeed. Speaking as a late twenty-something who does not need parental support, I am sick to death of articles and letters to the editor written by baby boomers lamenting the irresponsible younger generation. Oh ho, they cry, Get a job! You shouldn't be coddled. Back in my day we all got jobs, moved out, bought cars and didn't live at home with our parents at age 25. No sirree, we either were hippies or we married and bought property! And then we promoted policies that drove jobs overseas, made college a requirement for entry into the middle class, and hey, it isn't the younger kids supporting the housing bubble. We'd move out if you hadn't fucked up the country. Kthxbi.
What a terrific house!
It was indeed awesome. There's some background on this site. It was built as an inn (and is one again, obvs.); the main staircase wound around the reception desk, and the rooms were vast. We played epic games of hide and seek.
In the garage there were trunks full of receipts and ledgers with names like Rockefeller and Astor.
One of the saddest things I've ever seen was when I went home to my native coalfield in the Appalachians and someone I went to high school asked me, wistfully, 'What's it like to live somewhere other than here?'
I told her it was fabulous and she should move immediately. It turns out she did so.
I haven't heard from her in a while. I hope my advice was not bad for her. It's hard to imagine anything being worse than living in the coalfields.
my native coalfield in the Appalachians
I'm curious where that is. Could you discreetly hint at the more precise location?
47: Indeed. For about a year and a half now, I've lived in an apartment of my own but in the same town as my parents. It's the same state where I grew up, but not the same town.
I've thought about moving sometimes, but I haven't seriously looked for a job or home outside the state since graduation. This is partly for economic reasons; the cost of living is higher in my own apartment, obviously, but lower in this apartment than it would be almost anywhere else I'd enjoy living, and being able to borrow stuff from family saves me money. Also, though, I like it here. It's not perfect, and I would probably have to leave if I ever get professionally ambitious, but it's a pretty nice place.
Wow, Cyrus, your situation sounds almost exactly like mine. Eerily so, even.
It's hard to imagine anything being worse than living in the coalfields.
Less germy than living in your kitchen sink, though.
My great-great-grandfather was a servant at this house. Prospects for my inheriting it are bleak.
55 is a superior rant. Yeah, we climbed the ladder to success...and kicked the rungs out beneath us.
I don't have an ancestral home. But I do have an old photograph of my grandfather playing the fiddle, taken circa 1907 when he was about 8 or 9 years old. And I also have the fiddle.
