Heading Into The Home Stretch...

 It has occurred to me over the past few years that I'm, well, not getting younger, as much as I'd prefer it to be otherwise.  I am closer to the end of the story than I am to the opening credits, I guess.  

And it's made me even more sentimental than usual.  I guess I've always been one of those people who really prefers to attach my memories to physical things that remind me.  It's a bad habit, I guess, but I really cannot help it.  I have memories that are more attached to places and people, but there's a certain amount of me that's just missing some of the things I've lost.  

Aside from family that I've lost, there are a few places that made me who I am, that no longer exist.  

The first is the first home I ever recall living in.  I've been told it was my third home, after my parents brought me home to where they were living after they got married.  They moved from there into a short-term rental after they purchased their first home, before it was ready.  But that first home was in a small country development where the sign identified it as "Kutzman's Edition".  It was a broad U shaped road that turned off and on the Great North River Road, that ran along the Mississippi River, north of Sartell.  For much of the first two miles, the river was within sight while you were on the road, but then it and the road turned away from one another.  About a half mile north of where the river disappeared, the little road turned off the main road just next to Mr. Kutzman's house.  

The road came straight back to a right turn - or turning north from the westward road, and it ran maybe a quarter mile or so to the north, down, then up hill with a total variation in height of about six or seven feet.  Significant in the flatter parts of Minnesota.  Our house was the first house in the development, cars coming into our neighborhood would shine their headlights right into my second bedroom.  My first, the larger room at the back of the house, between my parent's room and the bathroom, had been taken over by my sisters when they outnumbered me two-to-one.  My bedroom was about four feet longer than my bed, which meant I could turn it under the window or next to the window and still open the bedroom door.  

The yard was probably fairly unremarkable, unless you grew up in it.  it sloped down away from the house in the front yard, and about twenty-five feet or so from the house, there was a little ridge/drop off where the yard dropped about a foot over maybe the same distance.  A few feet back from that ridge was a big twin-trunked oak that shaded the house.  It was remarkable only in that it was the only tree in the front yard.  We had maybe thirty feet on the south side of the house before the place I referred to as "The Forest" started.  It was a densely wooded couple of acres behind the houses that ran along the road.  Their yards did not extend back too far, but the woods were pretty thick, you couldn't see most of them if you followed the path into that area.

Our back yard was maybe a few feet deeper than the front yard, with a similar slope.  At least, for most of it.  At the very back of the yard there was a flat section that was also bumped up a bit from the rest.  There were two places where the slope was smoother, but most of the yard had that little ridge - the sort of ridge that would cause the lawn mower blades to bottom out onto the ground.  But the raised flat area was deep enoug hto allow a strip of land my mother turned into a garden, about eight feet wide  Behind that garden was a narrow two-feet strip that kept the barbed wire marking the edge of the cow pasture behind us.  Sometimes we would see the black-and-white cows up near the fence, and most of the time the cows were out of sight.  

To the north of the house was a narrow strip, maybe almost the width of a car, between our house and the vacant, empty lot to the north of my parents house.  From about the age of four to ten it was most of my world, outside of school, church, and my grandmother's house.  But it was great to live in when I was there.  

Some of the more memorable moments are, I think, the winter of 1966 or 1967.  I remember standing on top of a pile of snow and looking down at the roof of the house, not very far, but far enough, below me.  There were some pictures my father took, as a photographer, of the snow that showed it piled quite tall next to our garage, and apparently I was allowed out of the house to play in the yard during that winter.  

A few years later, I recall the morning that my mother ran out of the house then came back in and called my father at work.  These two men came into the house while I was still watching Captain Kangaroo, and they got on the phone with my dad.  It was winter time, I remember the cold air coming into the normally warm living room - and through the front door we almost never used.  They left after a few minutes, and Mom explained that they had been running a bulldozer in the lot next to our house.

It was then that I discovered that my parents had purchased the empty lot next to our house.  I'd always stayed out of the lot since we did not own it, but I did explore the forest to the south of our house. From that point forward, for about three years, I worked on making myself a fort and a small private area in the vacant lot.  In the back of it, next to my mother's garden, was a thick grove of what we called Chinese Elms.  They were tall, quick-growing trees with a number of unusual features.  The leaves had edges that reminded me of a saw blade, although they were curved.  Many of our trees were oaks - big red and white oaks, many rounded edges on their leaves, and lots of leaves.  Back in the days before "leaf blowers" we raked our yards, otherwise they would be a foot deep with fallen leaves - and acorns.  It didn't surprise me when I got older and understood the acorns were tree seeds, and that's why there were so many trees in the area.  

The Chinese elms also had branches that sprouted from the trunks opposite one another.  They were usually evenly spaced all the way up the trunk.  And the empty lot also had a lot of sumac all over, much less tall than the Chinese Elms.  But the whole lot was covered in old oaks, sumac and a little bit of poison ivy - that I found every damned year we lived there.  

I think it was probably right next to the trench that the bulldozer started to dig.  But that wasn't as much fun to explore as the forest to the south.  I noticed some of the older kids riding their bikes right past the tree with the black sign with white border that said "No Trespassing."  My dad said that meant not to go there.  I asked him why kids would go there if they weren't supposed to do that.  He said he didn't know why people did what they weren't supposed to do.  So I decided to explore, and wandered down that trail.  At first I didn't go any further into the forest than I could go before I lost sight of our house.  The house was white, with black trim, so it was pretty easy to see for a while.  And I stayed close to the path worn into the ground.  

As I learned later, there was a debris pile in that forest about half-way down the forest, and it was a great deal of building materials, plus a few abandoned appliances, like refrigerators.  I remember bringing a hammer with me a few times and prying pieces of wood apart and bringing them home.  My father found them in the garage, and asked where they had come from.  I told him I found them in the forest.  "Well, be careful" he said.  

A few months later, I started kindergarten.  I remember getting on Bus #3.  It was old already then, but for a kid who had only ridden in cars to that point, when I got on that school bus and everyone was telling everyone else about their summers, it was the loudest place I'd ever been to that point.  I met a few other kids from the neighborhood, and then things got interesting.

Most of the kids were a little older than me, but being in Kindergarten, that's the way it goes.  It didn't take long before we were making plans to get together and play, and even some of the older boys let us play.  Our games became baseball, or more often baseball with the kickball, kickball, or five hundred - where the ball was thrown into the air, and you tried to catch it - on the fly, without touching the ground, was 100 points.  One bounce was 50, two bounces was 25, more than two, no points.