201-209 Valley Ave NW

I lived downstairs front at 209 Valley. This was the best apartment in the best neighborhood I ever lived in. I loved living here. My neighbors were all Polish Catholic. The neighbor welcomed me with "Are you going to attend Sacred Heart or St. James"? I can't begin to tell you the utter look of shock on her face when I replied, "I'm not Catholic". I wasn't Polish either but a Hollander. Certainly the only one on the street if not the whole neighborhood. The landlord was the best I had ever had until she remarried and moved away. I HATED the new landlord, one of those do-gooders, really good at telling everyone else how they should live and be so grateful for the instructions they received.

I researched the history of the place. It had been the Malowitz Brothers Plumbing Co. The parents lived in 201 where they had raised their family. Then their married sons built a two-family home next door. Now both were 4-family. My neighbor was Stanley Dlutkowski, a single man who liked to sit on his back porch and drink beer. There was a huge stone horse-trough between the homes behind a big snowball bush. There was a four-stall barn behind the parent's home and a cinder-block building behind my house, probably where their plumbing business had been located. Sibley had been a dirt road and they must have had horses.

My apartment was the original living room, dining room and bedroom. The dining room had been converted into a small L-shaped kitchen and bathroom. I also had a large enclosed front porch. There was a too-small side entrance off the "kitchen". Stanley's apartment had the original kitchen, another bedroom and a new added-on one-story rear room that he used as his living room. The upstairs  apartments were more cramped. The house next door, the downstairs front apartment was very small, occupied by an elderly lady and the rear apartment was very big where a mailman lived. I was only in the large upstairs apartment where an elderly lady lived never in the other and I can't remember if she lived front or back. Her apartment was packed with stuff. Almost all of the tenants had lived there for a long time.

I remember when some bikers moved in across the street. They put out a huge loud speaker on their front lawn aimed away from their home so all the neighbors could enjoy. They sat out in chairs right on the sidewalk and threatened anyone who tried to walk by. We got together and signed a petition to get rid of them. One day I saw her children were moving out the lady from the small downstairs apartment. The told me she kept complaining about the neighbors across the street indicating they thought this indicated she was senile and they were moving her into a nursing home, wink, wink. I enjoyed correcting them.

The real estate card states that there were four one-bedroom apartments in each house.