Take a good look around

Photos from my hometown.

Home 1965 - 1984.

(It didn't have the swing with the pool in front and the garage door was a garage door)

Sometimes I shared a room with my sister. That's it - the window on the far left.

A visit home with MathMan. My brother lays across the porch.
It's hard to remember him with hair.

circa 1990

I loved that front porch.
Except for that idiotic goose and its ribbon around its neck.
My mother got eyebrow deep into that horrid faux country look.
First it was faux colonial with cheap bedwarmers hung on the wall and eagles.
And there was the Dutch Modern Incident.
My father never bought furniture again without consulting Mother.
And then came the mid 80s with its geese and pineapples in wishy washy peaches, mauve and dusty blue.
 Thank god for Martha Steward who pulled middle America out of that home decor nightmare.
Faux country decor made me long for the avocado green and gold appliances of the 1970s.
Celadon green was the cure.

When I lived there it was called Pavy's Hardware. 

Mr. Pavy's wife and daughter never drove.

They rode their bikes with baskets on front all through the town.

Mrs. Pavy wore cat eye glasses and the daughter had long dark hair.

 Today the building houses an arts center.

That seems right to me.

My friend Craig, who later became a great photographer in his own right, 

took a photo of me standing against that wall.

That was 1985. Long before digital photography.

It was my first introduction to what one could do with black and white.

 

The streets where we ran wild and free down by the river. 

This was in the dark ages before helicopter parents and

P.R. campaigns about stranger danger.

If anyone was buggering you, you were probably related to them

or knew them.

Sadly, nothing has changed, just the displaced fear of people we don't know.

The library where I checked out my very first book I Want to Be A Beauty Operator.

And lots of Bobsey Twins, Nancy Drew, The Hardy Boys and also discovered the magic of Beverly Cleary, Judy Blume, Sidney Sheldon and Danielle Steele.

Thank you, Andrew Carnegie, for giving even those of us in tiny towns the gift of the public library.

MathMan and I tried moving to Rising Sun once, but it didn't work out.

This would have been our house if we'd stayed and our place in Illinois had sold.

This house was once a girls' school dormitory.

The attic rooms on the 3rd floor still showed signs of a fire that happened around the turn of the century.

Mark this as regret #4,678 - the expired real estate contract.

Down below town. The bridge I jumped from.

That is not a metaphor. I really was that stupid.

When I say the word home, it's hard to know what I mean. It might mean Rising Sun, Indiana. It might mean Chicago and its suburbs. It might mean the middle of nowhere, Georgia. It might mean my family.


What feels like home to you?