In 1985 I was 3 years out of the hospital and living in supported housing. The agency that ran the supported housing moved us around several times and in 1985 I ended up on Addison Avenue, Palo Alto, California. It was a two story house that had been made into two separate apartments, an upstairs and a downstairs, the upstairs was rented by Stanford University college students and there were four of us in two bedrooms in the downstairs. The college students didn’t know we were with the agency and that we were mentally ill, we barely saw each other as we came in and out of our respective apartments.
Now, just as a sidenote, that’s the kind of privacy I expect and I complain I don’t get now. They lived above us for a year and half and we had no contact with them, they didn’t even know about us. I had no problems with them. Now, and in my last place my neighbors intruded into my life, they know I’m ill, in fact they know me well but I never wanted anything to do with them. They totally invade my privacy. Anyways, I digress.
We were living on Addison Street and there was an old, stand alone, one car garage out back. A hot dog vender kept his cart inside and we weren’t allowed inside. One day, a film crew showed up at our door and informed us they would be filming the garage out back for a documentary. It turns out, that was the garage that Bill Hewlett and Dave Packard started their business in. Yes, HP, Hewlett-Packard! We were amazed but life went on. Now, I just looked it up on ChatGPT and in 1988 the city restored the garage and turned it and the house into historical landmarks that people come and visit. That was three years after we moved out. I just thought that was kind of neat that for 1 1/2 years I lived in a historical landmark.