A Dream of Home: A Glimpse at a Boyhood Life in Homestead
I left my boyhood home many years ago to escape the smog and poverty that was so prevalent there. I always knew that the time would come that I would have to return. It wasn’t that I dislike the city where I was raised; I still wore my black and gold every Sunday. Perhaps, I was content where I was and enjoyed the distant ties with town. Still the time would come when I would return.
It was early summer in Washington State. The pink and white apple blooms had carpeted the earth, and the warm air had settled into the Cascades. This was the time of year when my work was most difficult. The whole family had their part to play.
I had met my wife, Davina, shortly after coming to Washington State in 1950. I was hanging out at a blues club a few blocks from Evergreen State University, in Olympia. She was a barmaid there, and I have always had a weakness for a beautiful girl who brought me drinks. Davina, however, was stunning. She was twenty and had just transferred from Whitman College in Walla Walla that semester.
We dated for about eight months before we were married. The pressure came from our unborn child, Nathan, who was born April 20, 1951. The three of us moved onto an eighty-acre parcel on the Nisqually River. In those days I worked for the Forest Service, until 1954 and the arrival of Dominick, our second son. Davina wrote short stories when she could, and I began to add onto our log home. It was then that I began my current profession as an outdoor guide.
Early summer, forty-five years later, it was time to make repairs to the cabin inflicted from winter weather in the structure. The boys still help out. They each have five acres a mile from us on eithe...
... middle of paper ...
...nsuming the riverfront from Whitaker to the Homestead high level. From the Bridge, you can see the tall slides at the water park. The once prosperous 8th Avenue was full of small shops and boarded-up buildings.
8th. Avenue, Homestead, Pa
Many things, other than the churches on the upper end of the tracks, were fairly run down. With the steel industry gone, the potential to make money in the area had drastically declined. I even took a ride through Braddock, where the Thomas Edgar Works was still functioning, and Braddock was in worse shape than Homestead. I must say that I am anxious to arrive back in Washington, so that I can forget what has become of my once fruitful boyhood town.
Works Cited
Stewart, Russell K., Interview with Author. 23 March 2001. Freeport, Pa.
Stewart, Bernadette Zapf, Interview with Author. 23 March 2001. Freeport, Pa.
Mrs. Carrie Watts, the main character in the movie, personifies the three common dilemmas of old age, e.g., “Where will I live? How will I cope by myself? And, What should I do about money” (Solie, 2004, pp. 91, 95, & 99). Having lived most of her life in the wide and open field of the town of Bountiful, Mrs. Watts cherished the thought of coming home to Bountiful. There had been several attempts in the past, that were all foiled by her over-protective son and overbearing daughter-in-law. Time and time again, she would express to her son, her desire to go back to Bountiful. The son, for the practical reason of employment opportunity, always decided against the idea of going back to Bountiful. It was a toss
1. “In the summer, we usually took a trip, all of us piled in a car and heading out to Wisconsin or Michigan or, once, to Idaho. We must have been a very noisy bunch, and I’m not sure how our parents put up with being cooped up with us in the car for those trips. The five-day trip out to Idaho when I was twelve had a powerful effect on me: what a huge and amazing country!” Creech said in author chat in 2002. On Creech’s official website, she stated, “One other place we often visited was Quincy, Kentucky, where my cousins lived (and still live) on a beautiful farm, with hills and trees and swimming hole and barn and hay...
Inner-city life is filled with glimmers of hope. The children had hopes of leaving the dreadful streets of the ghetto and moving into an innovative and improved place. There are times when Lafayette states, ...
...pecially for second generation Torontonians, but detangling themselves from the family past and unhomeliness allows for the city to be seen as a much brighter place that enables them to come out and discover themselves further. In conclusion, in order to find “What We All Long For”, it is within ourselves to discover and reflect influences in our lives that weighs us down, to then either deal or cope with the situation to finally live a life free of anxiety, loss and pain.
Sir Gawain and the Green Knight in The Norton Anthology of English Literature, Sixth Edition, Volume One. General Ed. M.H. Abrams. New York: Norton, 1993.
Sir Gawain and the Green Knight. The Norton Anthology of English Literature, Volume A. Ed. Stephen Greenblatt. New York: W. W. Norton & Co., 2006. 162-213.
Situated between the lush green rolling hills, is Small-Town, USA. It was election day, and looking forward to a visit to the ice cream shop, I accompanied my grandfather as he drove the ten-mile journey to town. Country life offered little excitement, but that day an air of uneasiness replaced the usual contentment one felt while passing aged buildings, their drabness contrasted sharply by a few colorful, modern improvements. Having spent the first ten years of my life here, it was easy to detect any change in the town's mood.
The trip to Brooklyn didn’t turn out the way I expected this morning. I went back to Brooklyn looking for the life I had left when I went to college. My father, the Judge Albert Cohn of the New York State Supreme Court always wanted me to go away and find a life outside of Brooklyn. It meant a lot to him to have his only child to go out of Brooklyn and continue what he called his judge’s legacy. However, I always miss what I had left. Life for me has been a struggle since I became an aide for Senator Joseph McCarthy. I’m an American patriot and my job those days was to prove to the country that the State Department was full of communist infiltrators, but the Senator and I had become what the Communists and Liberals call "discredited." The Senator influence in the country’s politics had decline but my influence is still strong. I didn’t fade away as he did. I always wanted to walk the streets that I walked when I was a child one more time to reassure myself that the struggle had been worth it. I yearn when I’m alone to feel again the joy I felt when I walked by the big houses of Rugby Road on my way home after school. Walking those streets one more time, I wanted to feel Brooklyn the way it felt to me then. Like a magical kingdom. Like the Jews in the promise land after wandering in the desert for forty years. Time seems to stretch endlessly on those days; ten minutes felt more as an hour and summer felt like the whole year. Nevertheless, this time, it hadn’t worked out that way to me. The magic feeling that felt as a boy looking at those houses from the sidewalk was no longer there. It seems that my clock had stared working right again. A minute was a minute and an hour was sixty minutes as it was everywhere else. Tick, tick, tick... tick. I couldn’t stretch time again or at least not today.
She married William Mackay Low on December 21, 1886 and it was NOT the best marriage. I think this is important because it taught her to come back strong, no matter the circumstances.
Often times I find myself reminiscing about my child hood. I recall driving throughout the prominent metro Detroit neighborhood in which I grew up, Rosedale Park. See in those days my community was a gem which shone bright toward the edification of the Motor City. On streets like Piedmont, Grandville, Stahelin and Artesian one could drive by almost at any time and see children outside playing, adults on porches and sidewalks fellowshipping, and houses abounding with vibrant lights, laughter, and with life. This was my community; moreover, this was a facet of my adolescence that I ignorantly took for granted. Today desolation has grown sovereign over this beautiful gem. Today the sounds of laughter have all but faded into a resounding restless silence. One could even say that abandoned houses and boarded doors and windows have become indigenous, not only to Rosedale Park, but to every part of the metro Detroit area. However, one thing has remained constant; Rosedale Park, no rather Detroit as a whole is still my community.
Sir Gawain and the Green Knight is a poem which tells the tale of a knight who undergoes trials-testing the attributes of knighthood-in order to prove the strength and courage of himself, while representing the Knights of the Round Table. One of King Arthurs most noblest and bravest of knights, Sir Gawain, is taken on an adventure when he steps up to behead a mysterious green visitor on Christmas Day-with the green mans’ permission of course. Many would state that this tale of valor would be within the romance genre. To the modern person this would be a strange category to place the poem in due to the question of ‘where is the actual romance, where is the love and woe?’ However, unlike most romances nowadays, within medieval literature there are many defining features and characteristics of a romance-them rarely ever really involving love itself. Within medieval literature the elements of a romance are usually enshrouded in magic, the fantastic and an adventure. Sir Gawain and the Green Knight follows Sir Gawain over the course of one year, from one New Years to the next, as was the deal he and Bertilak, the green knight, struck.
Frances Harper got married in 1860. Her and her husband had one daughter of their own named Mary, and he brought three children of his own into the marriage. Frances continued to take care of her family after the death of her husband died four years after their marriage. To help her through the death of her husband, he did speaking managements.”she was superintendent of the colored section of Philadelphia and Pennsylvani...
As a child growing up in a rural county, I didn’t have soccer practice or dance recitals; no play dates or playgrounds. I had trees to climb, woods to explore, bikes to ride and adventures to be had. I had bare feet in the grass, wincing on the gravel driveway, rocks digging into my soles. I had walnuts to crush, plums to eat, flowers to pick, bugs to catch. I had my little brothers to bug me, my mom to take care of me, my dad to laugh with me and my grandparents to hold me. I had books to read, worlds of words to get lost in. I had Saturday morning cartoons, Sunday morning church, and fireflies to catch every night.
Alvin B. Kernan. The Tragedy of Julius Caesar. New Haven: Yale University Press, 2009. Print.
Allen, Janet. "Julius Caesar." Holt McDougal Literature. Orlando, FL: Holt McDougal/Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 2012. N. pag. Print.