When Emily Johns talks about her home of 67 years, she talks about Christmases past and the warm memories that linger.

For more than 60 of those Christmas Eves, Mrs. Johns, now 93, has invited neighborhood children into her home to see the Christmas garden and to hear her read the Christmas story. Some years, as many as 50 youngsters have come to her Roland Park home.

While the Census Bureau reports that almost half of all Americans have moved since 1985, Mrs. Johns has stayed put since 1925. She is unusual, to be sure, but not unique. In many Baltimore neighborhoods, there are residents who have lived in the same house for five or more decades.

Like Joan Williams. Sitting in the front room of the house she was born in 59 years ago, she says, "I've always been here. . . . I'm going to stay as long as I can." The plain white house in the Carroll-South Hilton neighborhood of West Baltimore was Ms. Williams' grandmother's, and at least four generations have lived there.

Ms. Williams' sentiments are shared by others who have lived long years under the same roof. They're happy to be where they are, they say, and they're making no plans to move.

George Rebstock

When George Rebstock was born in 1908, his family's rowhouse -- the house near the south end of Light Street in which his father was born in the 1880s -- had no bathroom, no central heat, no electricity.

He remembers heating the second-floor bedrooms with kerosene and going to a "bath house" near Cross Street Market. He recalls that his mother cooked over wood and coal in the cellar where the family spent most of its time.

As a young man, he says, "it seemed odd when we moved from the basement upstairs" after a kitchen, bath and another bedroom were added to the rear of the house.

Mr. Rebstock, 84, remembers when the B&O; trains weren't far from his front door. "When the trains would stop for signals, people would be knocking coal off the cars," to take home for fuel or to sell to others.

He remembers when trolleys ran to the end of Light Street and when "a policeman would tend traffic until 10 o'clock at night at Light and Cross streets."

"Things has changed a lot," says Mr. Rebstock.

But not his address.

"I've been single all my life. My brothers and sisters went off and I still stayed there with my parents." One sister lives next door; she's been there at least 25 years.

"We still have a lot of the old neighbors. I'm the next to the oldest in the block."

Though he gave up driving years ago, Mr. Rebstock still gets around the neighborhood, eating often at the market and walking to his hangout, the Allen Center for Senior Citizens at Holy Cross Church.

He says the old house is too big for him. But, he adds, "I wouldn't know how to move."

Peggy Spear

Peggy Spear's father dreamed of a place in the country, but he died before he could move his family from Lexington Street in downtown Baltimore.

"My father always wanted to go out the York Road. He wanted to have a little farm and raise flowers," says Miss Spear.

So his widow carried out his wishes, moving her six children to a bungalow in a new area west of York Road in the early 1920s. Miss Spear, the second youngest, won't say how young she was when the family moved to Govans. But that was 69 years ago, and Miss Spear hasn't moved since.

It wasn't a farm, but it wasn't populated, either. "The whole street was nothing but wild flowers -- daisies, roses. At a certain point in the [street car] ride up York Road, you could smell the flowers.

"It was sort of a country place in the city. We were one of the first two [houses] in the development," she recalls. "They sold like hot cakes."

Many of the single-family homes set back from the narrow street that ends at the Loyola College campus appear to be copies of Miss Spear's. Only the colors are different.

Although the houses haven't changed much, the people have. Just a couple of the old-timers are left, says Miss Spear. She doesn't know the new folks very well.

Despite the traffic along York Road and the fast-food restaurants within walking distance, "I don't think the neighborhood's changed that much," she says. "It's a nice, home neighborhood."

Miss Spear says she's thought about moving and almost gave up the four-bedroom house for a smaller place in Columbia.

But the family home was always "headquarters" for her brothers and sisters, she says, and she's comfortable there.

"We had a good home. I'm tickled to death to be here. It just seems like yesterday that they started leaving."

Joan Williams

"She's still the same old house. She cries and creaks just like I do," Joan Williams says of the square six-room duplex on Leeds Street, just north of Frederick Avenue.

"She's got to be 100 years old," says Ms. Williams, who inherited the house from her paternal grandmother, Matilda Blanks. "I always stayed with my grandmother; she had me since I was 6 months old," when Ms. Williams' mother became ill.

Later, after her mother recovered, her parents and six brothers and sisters moved next door and then across the street, but Ms. Williams stayed in the house in which she was born. A single mother, she reared her two children there and shares it now with her daughter and a grandson.

"It used to be a beautiful place out here," says Ms. Williams, remembering the old working-class neighborhood and her grandfather's manicured lawn. "At one time, no door was ever locked. All our lives, it was black and white; you left your children with whoever was there."

Now, some of the houses have been torn down, leaving vacant lots. Others are in disrepair. The neighbors are not as familiar to her as they once were.

Still, "We don't have too many problems. We at least try to look out for each other," she says, adding that many homes are still occupied by members of the same families that lived there when she was growing up.

Her house has rarely been empty. "We've always had a house full; I can't ever say I've been lonesome."

It's not unusual for family and neighbors to drop by to see what's on the stove. "If anybody comes, they're welcome. I'm not used to cooking for two people; I'd always prepared dinner for nine or 10," she says.

RF "We've had a lot of fun here. I'm going to stay as long as I can."

Emily Johns

All those Christmases -- and the years between them -- blur a bit, but Mrs. Johns remembers that the celebration started "with my own children and the children close by and everyone had someone else they wanted to bring."

The Christmas garden, fashioned by her late husband, T. Morris Johns, evolved over the early years of their marriage. "We added to it during the Depression," she recalls; the garden wall was made of stones left behind by a street crew.

The Christmas Eve celebration evolved, too. At first, it was just for children, but their parents complained about not being invited. So, Mrs. Johns welcomed them, too -- as long as they sat on the stairs in the front hall, leaving the living room for the little ones.

Neighbors who didn't have children brought godchildren. And one long-ago Christmas, a new mother of twins "came with a baby in each arm," Mrs. Johns recalls. "It was beautiful."

Those children are grown, and those children's children, too. "We don't have a lot of kids anymore," says Mrs. Johns.

Last December, recovering from a broken hip, Mrs. Johns decided she wasn't up for the celebration. But the neighbors came anyway.

"It wouldn't have been Christmas without coming here," she says they told her.

"We had a wonderful evening. It made me feel we had to do it one more time."

The Johnses and their baby Edith moved from an apartment on Madison Street to the three-story, brown-shingled house a few years after they were married in 1923. They had two more daughters, Emily and Agnes.

"The house is exactly the way it was when we came here. Our neighborhood has changed very little," she says, ticking off the names of her long-time neighbors. "All these houses are the same; they haven't changed any."

But the nearest side street -- Schenley -- was once a dirt road, and life was a good bit slower, she recalls. "Everybody stayed home, and you could have somebody come and sit on the porch and you could have tea."

Even Mrs. Johns doesn't just sit on her porch anymore. Every day she walks up and down it 20 times for exercise. "If you sit all the time, you are going to dry up and blow away," she says.

In the living room, with children's and grandchildren's and great-grandchildren's photos around her, Mrs. Johns looks at a painting of St. John's College in Annapolis and remembers giving it to her husband before they were married.

Glancing into the sun room, she remembers young people dancing on Sunday afternoons. And New Year's Eve revelers. And a daughter's wedding guests.

"We had some wonderful parties in this house."