What do you remember of your childhood home?

I lived at on 226th St., in Laurelton, New York, in the borough of Queens (part of New York CIty) from the time I was 2 until the time I was 14.

I remember the house very well. It was white on the outside, and had two little railed off areas on either side of the front door that you could climb into. We had a little lawn, with a mimosa tree that got broken in half by my friend David but which survived to become a mighty tree.

The backyard also had a towering tree, an elm, I think, and there was a "secret passage" to the neighbors house on the other side of the block.

It was a 3-story home. The basement had these bizarre patterns on the floor in the boiler room, and then my sister made the basement her room when she was a teenager. There was also a mirrored  bar down there, but nobody drank in my home so we just used it for storage.

The main floor: a front door with a bizarre glass pattern that looked like a distorted face to me. You came in, and there was the piano to your immediate left. (See pic.) I used to crawl through the legs of the piano until I got too big. We had a nice dining room, a kitchen that was separated into two parts by counters, and thick glass-block windows at the end of the kitchen through which diffuse light streamed in. Then there was the den, where I watched TV. On the way into the den there was the cookie cabinet, and my mom always kept that stocked.

Upstairs were 5 bedrooms. My bedroom, when my brother and grandmother were still in the house, had to be passed through to get to their rooms. Later on, when my brother went to college, I took over his room, and his collection of Famous Monsters of Filmland magazines (and Playboys).

It was a warm, happy house, and my parents had lots and lots of "company" as they called it. (They were very very active in the local synagogue.)

I went back to the "big house," as my mom still calls it, about 15 years ago. Laurelton has become a very different place now, and when I rang the front bell and asked if I could come in and see my childhood home, the woman who answered looked very suspicious -- probalby thought I was a cop or something worse -- and said "no."

But my memroies are very vivid ... the snow falling ... the leaves ... seeing my breath and/or "punks" in the garage at night ... rolling on the front lawn with my magnificent cat Snoopy...those were the days, eh?

-- Jordan