The Story: Four Sisters, Four Houses, Four Decades (More or Less)

Were you to Google our house on Colusa, you might expect to find four little houses standing in a row next to a riparian creek with a verdant hillside immediately in back of them. You’d probably expect to find Bay Laurel trees covering the canyons and a tire swing lazily swinging in the summer’s breeze.

You would be wrong. That was then, this is now.

Our hillside has been developed. Many of the original inhabitants of the area have passed on. Some folks, of course, have moved away.  El Cerrito High school has been demolished and reconstructed. The baseball field is being built this summer; I can see the backhoes moving dirt around the field from my playroom window.

Of course, we don’t call it the playroom anymore. Now it’s “the loft.” And the backyard is no longer referred to as “the north forty,” nor is the bedroom I co-inhabited with my sister called anything but “the Office”.

Time changes houses, neighborhoods, townships…

By the early 1950s there were four children in our family. Four sisters.

Each one of us was very different, but all of us had a common thread that went beyond the simple twining of a DNA strand. We all had gone through the same schools, we all had lived in the same neighborhood, we all had the same parents. But the years when we grew up were different and our friends were different; our parents sought educational “enrichment” that was different for each of us.

Margaret played basketball on the back of the house, and took woodworking courses. She was quite artistic. Eventually became a nurse.

Her twin sister was a musician. She’s still an excellent musician and plays in several different local groups. Oh, and she was a lifeguard. Still swims several times a week at the El Cerrito pool.

My baby sister, my pride, my joy, my Susan. Majored in college in police science, became a cop and a nursery school teacher. (Same difference, she says.) Worked as an educator and married one. Moved many states away, but still is my best fan. Sews a lot, to this day.

And then, there is me. I love roller coasters, small planes, architecture *and* reading. But you know that from reading this blog.

Four sisters. All of them very different, and yet very much the same. 

Two parents and the occasional “extra sibling” rounded out our family. Bill lived with us while going to UC Berkeley. Frits lived with us while getting established in this country. Susan H. lived with us while her parents were in England. Four sisters, more or less…in our smallish El Cerrito home. We all got along reasonably well as we respected each other.

And the houses.

Originally, there were four little houses, built tight into the hillside. Each with similar elements. Each, check-by-jowl next to the other, a living room facing a neighbor’s kitchen window, perhaps. A backyard separated by chicken wire from the next door neighbor’s yard.  Four original little houses in the area. New houses being built each day, perhaps, but each of them complementary to the next one. The hillsides were still for playing, the creeks still for pollywogging. Kids had a happy childhood in this place, by and large.

No neighbor felt more special than the other. No neighbor was had more rights than the next. No one complained about trees, views, animals, barbecues, backyard birthday parties. No one thought that a clothesline was inappropriate, or a barking dog was more than a mild annoyance. (You just spoke with its owner if you did.) Chickens? Yep…several of my friends had chickens. Everyone had a garden, of course.

El Cerrito in the '50s, '60s, '70s and even '80s. The town grew. BART arrived. The Plaza was built, the police station was built, the parks were built. The Arlington stables came down. Chickens raised in our town became unusual. Horses, more so. It's not that livestock was outlawed, it’s just that fewer folk actually owned these creatures. We all loved the neighbors who took the trouble…..

But time changes things. Houses, neighborhoods, townships.

I like to believe that El Cerrito will grow into the future with the egalitarian attitudes of yesteryear. I like to believe that there is room enough for all. I like to believe that folks won’t mistake the size of a house for lifestyle. Or the space of a yard for richness of spirit.  Or money for wealth.

I like to believe that without the addition of terribly more regulations, edicts or legislative interventions, El Cerritans can do what we’ve always done so well. Live in respectful harmony with each other.  Its what we’ve always done in the past. And we’ve always done it well.