Rarely does a person have the chance to snap a photograph that includes both the house they grew up in and the house where they live now. The only example I can think of is when a person lives in the house next door to the one where they were raised. What are the odds of that happening?
This week, I experienced the past, the present, and the future captured for digital eternity in one photograph.
Here it is.
You can clearly see Honey, my sainted, 1984 RV, parked on Eliot Road in Erie, Pa. (Oddly, it was cold, windy and drizzly that day). Honey is where I live now and where I will live for the next few weeks as I travel to each of the eight schools in the University Athletic Association.
In the background, I think you can make out another house -- the one where I was raised. It was built by my father in the early 1950s (He had a civil engineering degree from Carnegie Tech and ran the family construction company, which was founded in 1908 and is still operated by my brother, Cle. When he was in his late '70s he bought a small van-camper and took several trips to sites around the Great Lakes).
My friend, Lisa Lifeline (the kindly neighbor lady), jokes that my former house isn't good enough for Honey.
I love that house.
I love the den, the laundry shoot, the back stairway, the milk box that opened inside and outside, the rec room in the basement, the bay window in the living room. But most of all, I love the closet at the end of the breezeway (That's the long entry way in the front that connected the garage with the den and the living room and the hall to the kitchen. Houses don't have breezeways anymore).
Every night, when my father came home from work, he would park his car in the garage and come through the door to the breezeway and open the closet on his left and hang up his coat and take off his felt fedora and put it on the shelf. He was home.
