I was a child in a time and place where:
Though I lived in town the woods was just up the street. It was safe to be there.Our unpaved street could wash out in spring storms.Our furnace burned coal. The water heater would fill one tub.One knew all cars by make and year and by their sounds.Telephones did not move.
My dad was a do it yourself guy.
We had a basement and an attic.Mom used a wringer washer.Grandmother and she canned vegetables in the basement.Boy scouts were a good thing.I had a paper route. A bicycle was the first vehicle.Grandparents looked old and had grown up before cars. We visited the graves of our ancestors.
Television was new and bound to corrupt.
Art was in faraway museums.New houses were being built all around us, we knew them in and out at all stages of construction.If we got hurt it was our own fault.
Beauty was in the scenery seen on long drives.Some houses were over a hundred years old.
Modern architecture was funny and not to be trusted.
I painted the Christmas decorations on the tall school windows in fifth grade.
My aunt and uncle lived in a stone house they had built. He did wood turning and built furniture. She wove on a loom.He read western novels while smoking in a red leather chair by a stone fireplace.
He was a great storyteller and alcoholic.
I learned to read house plans and studied before and after pictures in American Home.The Sears catalog was a book of wonder and key to many things.
The doilies disappeared when my grandmother died.I was taught to iron when my mom went back to work.I could pick out my own clothing.
I worked in a shoe store. The owner could letter all the signs by hand with brushes and pens.
Sex was not spoken of in my home.
I learned to speak of that at the shoe store.66 Journey
Catch A Falling Knife
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