I can always go home

I wrote this originally on a Friday the 13th... The picture above is of the main drag in my home town, probably a mile or less from the neighborhood that I grew up in... we could see that water tower from our neighborhood, just from the other side...


As a child of the 13th, I do not feel unlucky today. It is not my birthday today, but being Friday the 13th, I feel inspired to ponder about luck, fortune, whatever. I usually say that I am blessed.


I have two great kids. I am very proud of them. They make me laugh and make me proud. If luck or genes or whatever influenced their breeding, I cannot say, but they are for the most part hardworking, talented in their own ways, they love me, and as I said I am blessed to have them in my life. They are not perfect kids (just having me for their dad is a liability enough to start with...) but whatever their shortcomings, I would not trade them for the world...

My parents are still going strong after 61 years of marriage. My dad turned 81 awhile ago, and my mom will be 81 in two week... High school sweethearts, prom king and queen from the Class of '46 - they have weathered plenty of stuff. My dad has beaten cancer (first thing he did when his five years was up - he signed up to give blood again...) I play golf with him every so often - and he beats me most of the time (not a huge accomplishment...)

At my former job, the one I held for 26 years before getting canned... I could walk to the neighborhood that I grew up in. Most all the neighbors from that time are no longer there, but the houses are still there, and so are the memories. Within the last couple of years a video store was built where the ice rink was - right across the street from the house I grew up in... That is sacreligious, but they have good deals, so I have stopped there and rented movies. I would stand and peruse the recent titles, and betwixt the movies I can see my old front yard. The porch that I sat on when I sat and thought how awful it was that the Van Zeeland kids would have to grow up without their dad - gone at the age of 41. Pete, their oldest son, was just two years older than me. Look at those frickin' maples in the backyard of our house - they are monstrous. I used to sit in them for hours at a time, and read. They were great trees, and I got really good at sitting quietly in them, listening to conversations of people as they walked by, or avoiding certain kids who wanted me to come out and play. I learned how to be by myself a lot in those days.

Having a neighborhood like that to grow up in was a huge blessing. Within a four block area there were probably 40-50 kids within five years of my age either way, and about 75% or more of the dads worked at the mill. We ice skated until long after dark, we played kick the can and hide and seek and touch football and baseball. The moms got together and banned us from playing hockey, and soon after that tackle football. I felt unlucky because I never had a cast for all the kids to sign, and my knee popping out of joint never was bad enough to require surgery. My mom and Mrs. Van Grinsven conspired to cut out the full court basketball (our driveway and across the street to their driveway) after Boone (his real name is Daniel) ran into their clothes line pole and needed 16 stitches to close up a gash in his bean... Boone was a year younger than me, about six inches taller than me, 30 - 40 LB heavier than me - but was always hurt.

I was ornery and tough because I was small, and I loved it when the other team would run a play designed to go right at me. When I was in 8th grade, my brother, then a senior in high school, had a game of tackle football with a bunch of his buddies at the Memorial Football Field, too far away from home to be subject to the tackle football ban. I was just supposed to hang out with my brother, because everyone else was gone that day, but they were a guy short, so I got to play. Sure enough, they ran a sweep right at me, and I didn't flinch. Six foot two, 175 LB meets five foot four, 125 LB. I nailed Tim Stuyvenberg with a jarring tackle, and down we went. When the dust settled, everyone came running to see if I was OK. Hell yeah, but you better check him - I broke his collar bone.

Growing up the youngest of five, I was blessed to watch and learn from my older siblings. Lucky, too I guess, that my parents mellowed as the years passed. Spoiled, is what my brothers and sister would contend. I watched them match wits with my parents, and found what worked and didn't work. Lying never worked - the key was to stay above suspicion. One of my brothers was the master at that, and one of the others, was not... The stories at family gatherings now are hilarious. We never dreamed how good we had it in those days, and we also never thought how important those days would be to us now. My parents got married and within six years had four kids, and then four years later had me, and were done. They had some unreal Catholic luck, having no more kids after they were 30. Our family was on the smaller side of average for our neighborhood, as it was not unheard of to have eight, nine or more. One family in the little Dutch ghetto across the river from us had 18 kids and had to eat meals in shifts.

Sanderfoots and Winius' and Kanes, and I think Artz' still live there, and Mrs. Van Grinsven still lives in the house across the street from where we lived. Sometimes our entertainment after supper was to just go outside and see which of the Van Grinsven's were going to fight - they had seven boys, and then along came Nancy, the youngest. It was usually Boone who thought he could pound on one of the older ones, and it was usually shortlived because he got hurt so easily. I know how disappointed I was when they wouldn't come out to fight, as it seemed to be somehow reassuring to me. I felt lucky because my brothers usually didn't want to fight with me, they restricted their abuse to the verbal variety.

My dad was surprised when Mr. Seaver died a couple of years ago. Hardly anyone knew that he had fought at the Battle of the Bulge and had a couple of medals for heroism. He was just our neighbor, and that had never come up in conversation. That's how life is in the neighborhood sometimes. You know people, and you can borrow sugar from them and sell them stuff for school fundraisers, play games with their kids, do sleepovers, use their bushes for hiding places but when they died, there was always some eye opener in store... I never knew that the Hermes' had a little girl suffocate on a plastic bag when she was in her crib. I found that out when their dad died...

We were lucky - we are lucky, blessed. Here we are, 30 some years removed from that neighborhood, and we haven't lost anyone in our family yet...

It's not my home anymore, as I haven't lived there in such a long time. But it's part of the fabric of my life, and I can run into kids that I hung around with and we waste no time drudging up the memories of this and that and so many things. When Jardo was trying to do a balancing act at the sewage treatment plant and fell in the "poop patch." No one will ever forget that, ever. Or when Mr. and Mrs. Dehart died in a murder suicide on that New Year's Eve... I never knew how to talk to Dave after that - what do you say to a kid who lost both his parents the same day?

It's just a neighborhood. No park anymore, but houses and yards and trees still remain. And our memories, knocking around there like old ghosts. You can go home again, whenever you want. Home is not a physical place, you carry it around in your heart. I'm lucky to have that place as part of my roots. Lucky, or blessed.