Thomas Wolfe Was Right

No, you can’t go home again. Or at least, I don’t recommend it.

          In an idle moment I once used Google Earth to call up my grandparents’ street in Oklahoma. It was a pretty grand section of Tulsa as I recalled – not mansions, but fairly hefty houses. 

         50+ years later the street looked a little sad and rundown. Thankfully, I couldn’t figure out how to spin the view so that I could see my grandfather’s house so in my mind it remains the big white-washed brick house that I remember, with the forty foot holly tree in the front.

          This week we had to return something to our former neighbor from across the street. I haven’t been by our house since we’ve sold it, not surprising since we lived on a dead-end road off of another dead-end road. There’s really no such thing as passers-by there, unless you count the people unfamiliar with those streets, the ones who would come roaring down the road thinking it continued. We’d see them throw on the breaks at the cul-de-sac juust in time to avoid hurtling down the hill into the woods. It was a little comic relief in our day.

          My Guy backed into our neighbor’s driveway so I could get the full effect. Across the street sat our house, the one where I fussed if the hose was left out, or we forgot to shut the garage door. The small front porch that I swept, and where I washed summer dust off the siding, and straightened the cushions on the Adirondack chairs we placed there. 

           This was on Monday morning, when the occupants were likely at work, which meant everything there was left over from Sunday, when it had rained and rained.         

         From what I’ve heard, though, this is an improvement from when they first moved in, and the snow-filled front yard was also covered in cardboard boxes. For weeks.