Forest Avenue, Bethlehem, PA • Photo: R.C. Flores-Gunkle

Thoughts on Going Home

A tale of five houses

In 2025, I returned to Bethlehem, PA, where in 1940 I was born. The trip was of nostalgia and curiosity, but also to share with my wife and my adult children a little of my history. I especially wanted to revisit the houses I lived in and see if they have changed as much as I have! Among other historic places, I photographed graves in three cemeteries, but I will spare my readers those photos!

The first home that I remember living in was on Forest Avenue in North Bethlehem. At that time, 1945, it was as far out of town as you could get. There were only three or four farmhouses nearby, and beyond, there was nothing but fields and forest.

It was more than a mile from the Bethlehem Steel Company, where my father worked. I think he chose it to keep us as far away as possible from Vineyard Street, near the Lehigh River, where a flood carried away our first home.

We then moved in with my grandmother, and soon after, into temporary housing for flood victims. While we were living there, he bought a one-room country bungalow for our new home. He built four rooms on the first floor and two rooms on a second floor; we moved in about the time I was six and we lived there until I was 11.

When I saw the house again in June of 2025, I was not surprised that the forest and farmland were gone: there were blocks of whole neighborhoods in their place. However, the house looked almost exactly as it did the day we moved out. A breezeway still connected it to the garage my father built. The siding and windows were new, but they were in a style similar to the originals. The photo above is a view from the back (I wanted to see the yard). The house is more than 80 years old: it is obvious its owners have taken good care of it.

I could almost see myself playing tag or hide-and-seek there with my neighbors and friends Tommy, Larry, and Lucille. We would race through the rows of corn, bob for apples in their garage, and topple each other during king-of-the-hill. When we were a little older, the boys and I hiked more than a mile across the fields to their grandparents’ farm.

Above the breezeway, there is a small window that I once pressed my face upon to watch the sun, rain, wind, or snow dance in the fields and in the forest beyond.

The house on Ettwein (or Goepp) Street • Photo: R.C. Flores-Gunkle

We next lived on Ettwein Street and later a block away on Goepp Street in Bethlehem. The houses were within walking distance of the middle schools I attended. A long walk or a short trolley ride would take me to the historic center of town and to my favorite destination, the public library. My enterprising father — still a steelworker — bought, renovated, and eventually sold them. We never lived in one for more than a few years.

I don’t remember which of the two is in this photo. All the houses in the area looked similar and still look as they did then. I do remember that in one of them I played with a chemistry set in the basement — until my mother took it away, ending my budding career as a scientist. I didn’t mind. I could spend more time out in the yard. I can still picture my first great success growing plants from seed: Scarlet Runners, blooming all over a backyard fence.

My always busy and chronically absent father then bought and moved us to a five-acre farm near the neighboring hamlet of Hellertown. I was an unwilling and unhappy farmhand, uprooted from my friends and classmates, and forced to attend a new school, Hellertown High.

I have no photo. We drove around for hours looking for the place, but didn’t succeed. It seemed to have disappeared, which for me was not a bad thing. My two years there were like living in the Gulag.

The Franklin Avenue house as it looks today • Photo: R. C. Flores-Gunkle

Back in Bethlehem, my father designed and built a new house on Franklin Avenue, a stone’s throw from Liberty High School, and next door to his brother and his family.

I saw that the house had changed in character. It had new siding, windows, awnings, and a garage, and it looked odd to me, frilly. My father’s design had been organic — and his house did not have a huge concrete flower box in front of it!

I lived there during my last years of high school, years in which, through new friends, I discovered photography, art, music, dance, and drama. I began to be the person I am.

So there it is, five houses (six counting the ill-fated house on Vineyard Street) and four photos. I took many more, of course, of other subjects from my distant youth. I may write about them some other day!

Curious about my father? After he sold the Franklin Avenue house, he retired from the Bethlehem Steel Company, worked with a relative at a downtown restaurant, and eventually bought a historic country hotel and restaurant. It was his last home, but by then, I was off on my own.

Interested in those first years? Here is a story about them:

[embed]Memory is a Mysterious Master rcfgunkle.medium.com

And another!

[embed]Photographic Memories A camera told the storymedium.com