Just a few weeks ago, I was sent this picture of the place where my childhood* home once stood (thanks Eric F). Earlier this year, it was the site of a fire, and now it looks to be completely razed.
[*childhood in this context is defined as the time between 5th and 12th grade ...]
Much has been said about the bad things that happened in that house ... so tonight I want to talk about some of the *good* things ... the big tree in the back yard where I used to play with my matchbox cars, using the roots and the space between them as my community ... the immediate neighbors -- Mr. Bradley in the green home (whom I rarely saw but I knew he lived there ... and so, in my young creative mind, Mr. Bradley quickly became my version of Boo Radley, for all of you Mockingbird fans) and the Meileys in the other home (with the patriarch with the dutchified accent whom I've frequently mentioned every Fourth of July for his pronouncements made whilst watching the Hills fireworks each year [ohhhh ... dat vas a purrrrdy von!]) ... the 'hood kids at the time (Tom S, Jessica D, Sandi M) ... riding bike in the back alley in relatively small circles 'cause I wasn't allowed to go very far ... playing in the Quittie that ran behind that back alley behind the house ... Tippy the outside dog (back when outside dogs were an OK thing) ... the big Aframe and the little Aframe and the picnic table and the deck and my dad's woodshop (from whence all those things were made) ... the earwigs that frequently *infested* the big Aframe and the little Aframe and the picnic table and the deck ... the toybox in the basement and the hours of fun we had entertaining ourselves as kids (including the massive puppet variety shows I used to put on for my youngest sibling Rhonda G) ... and the visitors in the house, because as much as was wrong about those days, one RIGHT thing was that the "leadership" believed in entertaining and in having family over on the weekends and for holidays.
And yes, in the end, it was the house I last saw as I turned around from the other side of 422, with three boxes packed of my worldly goods, on my way to the biggest adventure of my young life, with my biological father having been woken up by my departure and having stuck his head out the front door to watch me go ... he whom I ran back to tell "don't worry about me ... I'll be just fine" as I slipped away into the night in mid March of 1989 ... it is *that* house, and the role it played in making me who I am today, that will be missed.
[In lieu of my usual companion links, here's an image of it when it was still standing, taken a few years ago during one my return trips back home ...]
No comments:
Post a Comment