I went to Albuquerque after I lived in St. Louis.   Here are just some of the places I lived in, taken from Google maps.

I was a teenager living with my first boyfriend when we were in this house, which is quite near a motorway, on a dead-end street.  In back were the three tiny little shanties and I’m surprised that they are still there.  Where the driveway now stands was yard, and my cat was buried there.   The place was owned by an older Chinese woman.  And when one of tenants moved out, she called the police and accused them of stealing her toilet and replacing it with a broken one (I don’t think she got too far with this complaint, but we thought it was hilarious, and typical of her).

I lived in this house in the north valley with my college boyfriend.   This house was built by my college boyfriend’s grandfather.   It had been built as the home for the watchman of the lumberyard that was just to the west (it was long gone by that time).   My boyfriend’s dad still owned it and it was pink.  After the boyfriend graduated, he sold it to the daughter of the people across the street.

I lived in a flat here when I was in college.   This was the very first place that I had where I lived all by myself, no roommates or boyfriends.   It had almost no furniture, but it was lovely and airy.  It is right on the edge of downtown.  I was living here when I met M, and I didn’t stay in it for very long after that.

What surprised me about this search was that all of these places still exist.   Perhaps “safe as houses” is correct after all.