ghosts

"You can never go home again"- Thomas Wolfe, 1940. 

This was our house in the middle of dirt, My folks bought the concrete shell  after the war, in 1946. My Dad built the rest of it adding a finished basement, a dinning room, a garage,  hot beds, a garden. He grew  amazing flowers, vegetables, apples ,trees,  lilac bushes ,strawberries, and a  loaded raspberry patch sheltered from the wind in between the other gardens and the garage. He built a concrete incinerator where we burned cardboard and trash that would not compost. It was  a frightening jack in the box - feral cats would get in through the ash door at ground level,  and fly out of the top when the heavy metal cover was shifted to put  the trash in. Feral cats did not fly silently- they screamed as they made contact with your face. Dad sometimes would take his twenty two  when he dumped the trash.

Dad lined all of the edges with marigolds  and mums to keep bugs away, He built the cute picket fence all around the back and put in gently sloping curbs to the street so that our bicycles would have a smooth transition. His Gladiolas grew up the side of the garage and were surreal in their splendor!

He roofed it entirely with red tiles, planted a blue spruce which loved growing too big- and built a red and white concrete checkerboard patio out the back door  surrounded by tall cedar planks and a glorious wooden gate.

Arial view of back then- our house on the corner , left of  center, at the top of Buffalo street. The long white apartment building kitty- corner was where the feral cat community lived, appropriately, not far to go for "shopping" to our incinerator.

I went for a google walk around the town. It is not at all the same, not even familiar. This is our house now.  Oh dear!

Our famous and fabulous front street , always a source of pranks and hooliganism- bars and whore houses, really should have remained in tact. History of the West right there!

I have posted this photo of Virginia's drawing of front street before, good thing she captured it when she did. 

This lone building is all that is left of the entire street of shoot 'em up bars and whores, so much a part of our growing up . It is the bar with a star , "Cosy Rooms' - side door. So sad that everything was torn down in a fit of righteousness. Damn! Driving around with the google truck was so sad.

What you see here is a ghost. The google van does not go to that little town often  , so, the google trip through town knits times and trips  together, there are three different times of when our house's photo was taken in different stages of disrepair, turn the google corner and it becomes another house in another time , and then back again. So weird, but the weirdest is one of the photos, which I zoomed in on,  our forever across the street neighbor- their children and my brother and I grew up like siblings , shared kitchens and what ever the moms had going- Cookies and oranges generally.  Arty and my Dad worked the same job , same interests, and went to high school together , so Yes, long time friends. One time Arty and my Dad drove a tractor into the school  late at night and cemented the doors to the school shut. Anyway, Arty died in 2005- but there he is sitting on the front porch looking right at you and me.  

Interesting travel:

https://www.space.com/hologram-doctor-space-station-nasa-astronauts?utm_source=notification