This house was built in the late 1950’s early 1960’s. So the paneled walls shouldn’t be a surprise, but if you’ll note, in the very front, on the lower left of this drawing is a bar. Yep, many of the houses built during this time were built with bars in the family room (we called this the game room) and this room was no exception.

Now I spent ages 4 thru 22 living in that house (with an exception of a year when I attended Art School and was living on the North Side of Pittsburgh). In fact, when I was 17, 18 years old, my grandmother moved in with us and my bedroom became the game room. The couch, at that time, was pull out bed.

In ALL that time I was never tempted, as were my friends who visited, to drink any of the booze. Seriously. I’m sure experts would say that having bar around kids, teenagers especially, is just asking for trouble, but not for us. Maybe we were just weird.