On this date

Fifty years ago on this date my family and I moved into a new house. I was nine years old.

The old house.

It was a big deal to me. The house I spent my first nine years in—the house we left—was the first place of any kind that I knew well, a stable structure with hiding places and unreachable shelves. In the backyard there was "the woods" an untamed section that exist even now on the lot, which is under an acre in size. Why we had this and none of our other neighbors did is unknown to me. There was an apple tree that never produced apples but was the landmark tree and the only climbable one. There was the occasional box turtle we'd catch, imprison for a few days, then release.
The house we moved into was just a mile or so away. It was bigger, of course, and had an ostentatious look of a mansion. One of its two chimneys had, in concrete, the date 1930 on it. Our previous house was built in the late 1950s. The new house cost $65,000. A vast sum to me. It would sell for about a million now.

The new house.

Our old house had everything we needed. Separate bedrooms for my two brothers and I. A garage, a driveway. The usual house stuff. I think much of the reason we moved was to keep up the appearance of being more financially successful than we really were. My father was a kind and intelligent man by was not aggressive in the working world, a trait I inherited and my career success was far below his. 
My mother would be surprised that I'd remembered this date, as I'm sure many parents are when it comes to what their kids find significant. Now, this half century later, my parents are dead and no one else cares. I reflect on it alone.

Flaccid

The Complete and Total Loser has never felt more ... blah ... than he does now. He has no drive, no passion, no ambition of any kind. There is nothing physically wrong with him but if he could he would spend his days in bed, listening to his radio, doing crossword puzzles, reading magazines. There would be no reason for him to leave it.
This ambitionless ambition may come true one day. The Loser's parents are elderly, and have mentioned that when they die they will leave him their house, given that his two successful siblings both have several houses. The house is a two story house with three bedrooms, two bathrooms on a good piece of land in a good suburb within walking distance of a train station. By no means impressive in most of the country, its location in his part of the East Coast would have it selling for nearly half a million dollars.

The Loser is used to getting by on twenty thousand dollars a year. With the proceeds from the house wisely invested in conservative places, he would move far from his city, where the cost of living is low, buy a house far from others, stuff it with supplies, and sleep until he is dead.