106 N. Blacknall St.

You will notice a vacant lot to the left of this house and a Pre-Fab house to the left of the vacant lot. The vacant lot is where our house was located and when I discovered it missing, I was sick to my stomach.  The Pre-Fab house along with the other odd things placed on our old street, was causing my past to disappear.  The house in the picture to the right of the vacant lot was owned by Nell and Ollie May during my growing-up years.  I would work with him sometimes as a painter and Nell would work in her yard talking with my mother. They had a daughter named Doris and a son named Norman whom I really didn't get to know because of the age difference.  I remember the first Edsel Ford automobile that was driven by Doris's husband.  I thought it was the most oddest of all the cars during that time period.

Our house was 108 N. Blacknall with a huge oak tree in the backyard that I climbed frequently all the way to the top.  A creek down below our backyard ran the length of all the backyards and provided me a private jungle get-a-way that allowed my imagination to flourish.  So many memories and so many years wiped out with the push of a bulldozer. And no one even took the time to notify previous owners so we could make one last viewing of our homeplace. But even if we had been given the chance, the police would have had to escort us because of the crime all over the area.  The place where I played, walked and rode my bicycle as a child safely and without fear, now a place of tension with different people and different attitudes.  I think sometimes this small patch of life is what the world has become on a much larger scale.  There seems to be always a nation or person who wants it all his or her way and will do almost anything to obtain that power.  I have yet to understand the logic behind such thinking and I can only hope the old neighborhood turns itself around with good people like I remember.  The past is only a flicker of mini-seconds speeding by right in front of our nose, yet it seems at the time that it's all going so slowly.  We really don't exist in the past or future, rather the present and that very slippery middle ground is all we have at any given time.  Stop and observe carefully your middle ground, taking in all you can for the sake of cherised good times so precious we can't even hold onto one of them.