day 378...
Today I had to take my youngest to the Doctor's office at Toledo Hospital. All is well.
Before heading home today, i took a side road a decided to visit a nearby neighborhood where i grew up from birth to about 7th grade. it was one of those spur of the moment things, and i wanted to see how the old neighborhood was after all these years.
the first stop was to the school and church that i knew as St Jude. it was a small catholic school that i was enrolled in for first grade and my parents and i were long time parishioners of before switching to St Patrick of Heatherdowns. despite a few paint jobs here and there, the building itself hadn't changed in nearly thirty years. now it was an academy/church. i think i was enrolled there in 84.
anyway, a lot of memories surged back in those brief moments. i remember the large hall in the basement that occasionally we used for a gym or a cafeteria. i remember the school day that was designated "Michael Jackson Day" where everybody in the school dressed up like him, stayed outside all day, and did "break-dancing" (which now that i think about it, i think that was a waste of a day, buy hindsight is 20/20 now). i also looked around a bit and saw how my perception of things as a child had now changed as an adult. it seemed a bit odd at the moment, almost surreal, but it was still familiar to me.
i retraced the road route that our old bus used to take to school, working my way back to the neighborhood of my youth. i'm surprised i still remember it after all these years. the roads looked the same, though a few of the houses looked different. obviously time and scale change things a bit.
i crossed Richards road and drove into the neighborhood complex where my old house used to be. i drove slowly, as my mind began to overlap memories with what i was seeing in real time; The old Marsh's house, home to a child that i knew from first grade, though he was a full year older than me, no longer the cream color and brown that i had known the house to be. the place looked dead, a large dumpster filled the driveway.
i made a left turn down a long road, which didn't seem so long now since i'm fully grown. I thought back to those crisp October nights. Halloween, leaves on the ground, a chill in the air. those feelings and thoughts swept over me as I inched closer to my street. i noticed that the old woods and the empty yard were still there after all these years, almost untouched my time. i smiled a bit, made the soft turn and slowly turned onto the street of my youth.
i narrated a bit to my children as i inched down the road, giving the children a retelling of who lived where, and what the places used to look like. it sounds cliche, i know, but the past and the present perfectly overlapped for those moments. i told them of the Krells, The Brassfields, whose son stole money from me one time, and forced him into exile from my house. more names came to me; the Caukins, the O'sheas, The Binders, The Wests...
i slowed to almost a complete stop in front of one house...
Two large trees near the road acted as a canopy in front of the home...trees that had been planted as saplings by my father about 5 years before we moved. the other trees that has lived closer to the house had been removed long ago, but after we moved. i saw my first home again. the house was still it's grayish blue color, the windows still outlined by black wood. the old script numbers still above the garage proudly. i inched a bit forward to see a bit of the backyard. the fence was still there, but the trees weren't. kind of a shame. though i did catch a glimpse of one of the old clothesline posts that my mother used to use religiously during the good weather.
i drove down the street, and more houses that i knew from my childhood. the Harrisons and Naumanns, The Prusses and Dilbones. I remember the Brubakkers and the house next to theirs that we inadvertently broke a window with a nerf football. heck, i even remember the house a few more down the road. the name escapes me, but i know that there was a kid with a single mom, and the mom had a nice body on her, for sure. definitely a MILF by today's standards :}
so i drove back to more familiar roads. roads that don't call to me as much as the street of my childhood. i felt a little sad, a little regret from time lost and forgotten. was life so much easier then? i don't know. It's hard to say. but, i won't forget my childhood, nor will i forget that old house on Kingswood Trail.
MK
No comments:
Post a Comment