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| Google Street View (altered) |
Lately I've been thinking (too) hard about my past life. No, not the one where I was a Centurion in Caesar's army--the other one, where I was just younger. When I got out of high school in 1968, I decided to blow this town (Palo Alto, CA) and . . . uhm . . . go somewhere else. This I did. I drove to Independence, MO, stayed with a friend for a short time and then rented a little house. It was the first place I lived all by myself. On my own. It is pictured, above. This is a recent picture, lifted off of Google Street View and Photoshopped a bit. I assure you, when I moved in 50-some-odd years ago, it didn't look much better. The gravel driveway you see certainly wasn't any better. It was winter, and there was a weird little furnace in the living room (if you could call it that) whose pilot light required re-lighting at odd wee hours throughout the night.
For context, this is where I lived when I worked at a foundry for six months and began a long and laborious education concerning how to make a living.
All the choices… yet we made the ones we did. Astonishing!
ReplyDelete~Paula (Blogger still won’t let me sign in on my phone)
Ha. And every one sounded like a good idea at the time. We remember the decision, but, usually, not the context so much.
DeleteI was just on a week-long road trip and while in another state, Google would NOT let me log in. It kept warning me that someone was trying to log in, using MY password. Of course. I'm sure there was a way, but I don't actually work for Google--at least they don't pay me--and I'm not going to spend time trying to unravel their cryptic, random glitches.
DeleteYou can just end your comments with: " -PL" I'm good with that!
ReplyDeleteMy first by-myself apartment was and still is in a bad part of San Pablo, CA, where I was awoken twice at least by gunfire but the junior college was a short walk away, so, win. It blows me away that I took college-level drafting with pencil and paper, no CAD yet (this ~1980). I've since driven past and the apartment house didn't look familiar. I think they have since built walls around it, but economically, i.e. no machine gun turrets.
ReplyDelete-Not PL
I don't know what the national average is, but a significant number of schools and houses that were once important to me no longer exist. My grade school and my Jr. High (Middle School . . . WHATEVER) are gone, one high school, uncounted residences, and the one that hurts the most, a small Victorian house on Hamilton Ave. in Palo Alto, because it was a particularly happy time. Of course, all of the lost places are from my childhood, and that was so long ago, it's not surprising. In my adult life, I only hope that one day the telephone company building, that asbestos infused negative chi' generator and arguably ugliest building in downtown Kansas City shall be razed, imploded, bulldozed, covered with lime and buried, or all of the above.
Delete