On 16 October 1950, I was born in the semidetached house shown here. (Judging by the age of my sister, I'll guess that the picture was snapped in 1951.) The place would remain my home until 22 May 1960, when we left for Canada. The property occupied the northwest corner of In der Heide and Bergheimer Weg, roughly 65 meters long (north-south) and 25 meters wide (east-west). The west-half of the lawn was studded with fruit trees, mostly apple, some pear. The large tree that you see in front of the dwelling was cherry: I used to climb it to the top and look east (to the right) — down to and over the town of Neheim, now a district of Arnsberg.

My father's father, Friedrich, is shown in a red circle in this 1934 photo, taken when the house was being built. Above him, in a blue circle, is Herr Westhoff, who ended up owning the northern half of the house and its adjacent property. When Friedrich died in August 1945, the half-house and property went to his second wife, my father's mother, Maria. I believe that my father bore a lasting (likely unwarranted) grudge against his mother concerning the circumstances of his father's death. Married in February 1947, my father began to raise a family in his mother's home. If there was any animosity in the house because of that (the upstairs bedrooms could only be accessed by first walking through Maria's living/sleeping quarters), it could only have been exacerbated by my father's emigration to Canada towards the end of May 1957. For three full years, Maria had to put up with her daughter-in-law and three grandchildren — wondering perhaps if her son would ever reclaim them. When Maria died in June 1968, her will stipulated that the dwelling and property go to her first-born, Karl Stahlschmidt — my father's twenty-two-years-older step-brother.

Today, the lawn and fruit trees have been replaced with three more houses. My cherry tree is gone as well. The long uphill driveway is still there — shared, apparently, with the new house just south.