You Can Go HOME – To Visit

New to my blog?  To better understand why this story was written. please read “A Child of the Greatest Generation” in the August 09 Blog Archive.
 

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383 1/2


You can look back but you can’t go back! 

     If you only lived in the present, that would be true.  But we all have memories and we can go back…at least to visit.

     I did that recently. I went HOME to visit.  It wasn’t the first time I took that journey.  Hopefully it won’t be the last.  A person often needs to be creative to have an excuse to go HOME, particularly if HOME is nearly two thousand miles away from where you live today.

     This time my excuse was to attend a high school class reunion, from a high school from which I never graduated, the 55^th reunion for the Class of 1954.  My parents moved west in 1953, the year before I was to graduate from that high school.  It still was a good excuse.

     The last time the excuse was to attend a dear aunt’s 95^th birthday celebration.  She lived 125 miles north of HOME but close enough for a brief visit. 

     Every time I returned HOME the journey brought back floods of memories and I always brought a camera to capture what I could.  On this visit I also brought back a strong desire to document HOME. 

     Before moving west my parents lived in three homes.  I knew the location of the last two but locating their first home eluded me.  It was the home my parents returned to following their honeymoon, in 1935.  Little Billy was welcomed into their home a year later.

     I knew it was an apartment.  I had seen eight millimeter, black and white movies, taken the day they brought me HOME from the hospital.  From those movies I remembered what HOME looked like and I remembered the street name but little more. 

     Of greater concern; should I find the address, after more than 70 years, would HOME still be standing.  Time has a way of destroying the past.  All I needed to do is to look at HOME‘s downtown, filled with vacant lots and a few new buildings, on land where my memories once stood.

     I had Then and Now photos of the home we left to move west, and my second home on Elm Street but no pictures of my first home, other than the pictures in my mind.  Anyone who knew my parents and could remember when little Billy arrived HOME was gone. 

     If I could only find a 1935 telephone book perhaps the mystery could be solved. The question was who would possibly have kept phone books back that far?  Perhaps to public library! 

     Before this trip HOME, I contacted the library and to my surprise, although they did not have old telephone books, they did have a large archive of old documents, photos, and data. 

     Most importantly there was a dedicated, on site, historian who lovingly watched over my history and the history of many who came before and after me.  Although he didn’t have old telephone books, he directed me to the stacks where a series of hard bound books, called City Directories, were gathering dust.  Published each year, the book listed everyone who lived in town, including; what they did for a living, to whom they were married, their phone number and address.

     I had found the mother-lode.  All I needed to do was to find the directory published in 1935, the year my parents moved to town…and there it was, a ragged eared 1935 City Directory.  And listed in alphabetical order was, Adler, Walter, owner Wally’s Workingman’s Store, Marion (w), work and home telephone number and, most importantly residence street address.

     One big mystery solved.  Only one question remained.  Was my first home still standing?  A freeway was now located in that neighborhood.  Looking at a current map, the freeway appeared to cut horizontally across that street.  Was my first home still there?  The only way to find out was to drive down the street, hoping not to be disappointed.

     Armed with the street address 383½, I slowly began my trip, heading towards 383½. What I saw, as the numbers got closer to my destination, was a bit unsettling.  It was a freeway entrance.  It looked as though the street ended there, nearly a block short of HOME.  Soon I was on top of the freeway ramp which took an abrupt turn to the left…but the street kept going, down the hill for two more blocks where its life ended, up against the freeway.

     Half way down the hill on the right, as I remembered, there stood 383½, albeit changed in appearance over the 70+ years since Walter and Marion Adler were filmed bringing Little Billy home.  But it was HOME none the less.  My first HOME! 

I had come back HOME, to my first HOME, if only for a brief moment, if only in my mind.