We just acquired my wife Judith 's family home in Shorewood Hills, built by her parents during the Depression. It 's a lot like our Spanish-style house in Santa Monica: considered old and modest by the authorities, but nicely located.

I am determined to save them both from the wrecking ball.

Judith and I saw the world through the windows of many addresses when we were a young couple in the 1960s -- a New York City housing project in Harlem, a walk-up flat in San Francisco and faculty housing in Madison.

Then we bought our first and current house when we moved to Los Angeles in 1970.

We borrowed some money and sold some insurance to make the down payment on a three-bedroom, 2,200-square-foot house on a quarter-acre lot. The cost of living the American dream in California then was $75,000, quite a price for us to pay.

Twenty years passed and our girls left the nest. In the prosperous 1990s, we started getting telephone and house calls from realtors wanting to list our house.

Suddenly it had become a "desirable neighborhood property " since it 's near good schools, shopping and a bus stop, and on a street with pine trees and sidewalks. But we liked our little house and didn 't want to move.

After several years, the same realtor came by to tell us we could get a very fine price for our "estate. "

Estate? I was a little confused since the house was the same size, the roof a little leakier, the plumbing rather more reluctant. The realtor said: "Maybe we could fetch $750,000 for your estate. "

Proud our house had miraculously morphed into an estate, I worried I 'd have to stop mowing my own lawn and sell my Ford Escort.

But the thrill was soon gone.

Months later, the realtor sheepishly told us, "Sorry, you no longer live in an estate. That requires a property valued at over $1 million. However, it is still in a prime residential location. ' " Our sandcastle estate had only six months in the sun.

Time went by. We painted the house a brighter white, put in a fountain, did some landscaping. And we felt pretty good about the way things looked, never better.

Our realtor came by again. "Your house has real potential as a fixer-upper. ' With a few extra rooms, a new kitchen, and perhaps a Jacuzzi, I could fetch you a very nice price on your investment. "

Just recently the realtor returned. He told us, "Your house is probably a teardown. ' The lot is just big enough to build a mansion, although without much of a backyard. "

I told him we had just acquired an estate in a prime residential location in our hometown of Madison, complete with a raspberry patch and laundry chute. So we will have to keep living in our teardown. A small price to pay.

Yet the American dream has a twist now as we sail through our 70s, planned as a peaceful period to write my memoirs.

Every night when I return home, either in Santa Monica or Madison, I worry the wreckers are already there to level my two old friends.

Stiehm is a professor of pediatrics at UCLA and a native of Madison.