A Lane Called Memory

This afternoon I had lunch with a good friend from high school. We hadn’t had the opportunity to sit down and chat for way too many years and the reconnection was delightful. She had been kind enough to attend my father’s memorial visitation a couple weeks ago, and seeing her there had prompted the lunch date, which prompted the walk I took afterward – a walk down a lane called memory.

A parent’s passing will do that to you – that memory walking business. Though it was late afternoon by the time I left the restaurant (high school girls have been known to be chatty, and grown – even long grown, ones – are often no less so!) but the sun was shiny and the sky was blue, so I headed back in time.

Past the assisted living facility where Dad spent his last years and days. He was cared for there by caring folks, and we are grateful for that; he sometimes would make his way to the Dairy Queen around the corner. That wasn’t there when I was a kid. Next the Pizza Hut that was, but it isn’t a Pizza Hut any longer.

The Henry Ave. Bridge across the river that took me to the west side wasn’t there, either. This one was brand-spanking new and I think it might have a new name, too. Up the hill on Olympian – when I was just about to start learning to drive I just knew I would never make it up that “mountain” in the wintertime. Why, I was positive I would slide right back down and cause a wreck. “You won’t,” my Dad comforted as we braved it for the first time. I didn’t.

The hospital on the right, where all the kids were born in the 50’s, is now an apartment building. The hospital hill is still there, though, and I’ll bet the kids still go sledding on it every winter. Doesn’t quite look as intimidating as I remember it, though. But I imagine a person could still manage to sprain her ankle on it and have to wait a really, really l-o-n-g, really really f-f-frozen, really really p-p-painful time for her dad to come pick her up (didn’t have cell phones then and I wouldn’t have been allowed one anyway – Dad had gotten by without one and so could I!).

Young swimmers were having a big ol’ time in the “Big Pool” but it’s a different big pool. Money was tight for my parents “back then” but they managed to come up with the funds for each of us to have a season pass every summer. We actually had to walk the 85 hotter-than-hot, blazing  blocks to the pool whenever we went, too. Well, maybe it wasn’t 85. Maybe just 5 or so. (!!) But there were a LOT of steps to get down, and we also had to walk back UP them! I’m not at all sure I’d allow my unaccompanied youngsters that long trek today, but it was a different time.

The corner grocery where we were sent for a last minute loaf of bread or treated to 10 cent taffy apples is a daycare now, but the house we moved into in 1957 still stands – and looks pretty good, too. Mom’s roses are gone, the color’s changed and a garage has been added (no – everyone did not have a house for their car back then; our driveway wasn’t even paved). That’s a neighborhood where almost each  dwelling housed 4 or 5 kids, had just 3 small bedrooms and only one bath (Dad rigged up a trick-or-treater-counter and each Halloween would record over 350 scary beggars!). Coming from a teeny, cramped trailer, I remember how thrilled my father was to provide that brand new, post-war home for his family.

The huge-for-its-time grocery store where we shopped is now a Family Dollar, but I’m thinking that store just built a “huge-er” one farther on down the road, ‘cause the bag they put my sweet corn in at the farmstand had the name of the store on it. Oh, and it was a different farmer. I told the “new guy” that my parents would never buy sweet corn there unless it was 3 dozen/$1.00. He just laughed and charged me $4 for 1 dozen. I hope it’s good!

In 1968 Dad moved his family into another brand new house, this one with 4 bedrooms (sorry boys, you still had to share, but my sister and I had our own rooms. Girls rule!). Sad to say, it no longer has much curb appeal, is a little rough around the edges and I think it misses my dad. We do too, house – we do, too.

They say you can’t go home again. Maybe that’s true, but you can take an hour and visit where it used to be. Bye, Daddy. Thanks for the memories.