Home

My old home town is really now just a suburb of the city. It’s was a coal producing town at the turn of the last century so unlike most suburbs it’s got it an honest-to-goodness little downtown. When I was a kid, the coal mining was long gone and aerospace was king. Everyone’s father worked at Boeing or Paccar.

In the 1970’s the economy here tanked and many families lost those living wage jobs. My family was luckier than most as my stepdad was an executive and of course kept his job. With that the old little downtown faded. The Woolworth’s and J.C Penny’s were gone. The old Roxy Theater closed (many good memories there) the area just dried up.

By the time I got to high school I was chomping at the bit to get out of this place and move to the big city. As soon as any of us kids had access to cars, that’s where we headed on Friday & Saturday night. If our mothers had known….

As soon as I was able I made my break for it. It was exciting. Living in the “gay ghetto”, and paying way too much for dumpy apartments. The best part was meeting and being exposed to great people I’d never have met at home. It exposed me to a lot of very cool things and some not so cool things.

The years went by and I had some pretty wild times. Stories that make me blush now. After about 7 years I met Jay. We lived on Broadway in the heart of everything. We went clubbing a lot. Partied and played. After a while living like that got old, so we bought a house on the outskirts of the gayborhood. We partied and played less & less and put the energy into remodeling the house. We quickly became very settled homebodies.

I’ve told this story before, but here it’s in context. This is how we first saw our current home. We had gone to a coworker house warming party. There was another guy there that Jay was talking to and they kept kind of looking at each other oddly. I’m not sure how they figured it out but after about 30 minutes they realized they were step-cousin (don’t ask me to even try and explain that one) they we’re looked after by the same shared grandmother when they were kids. Because of they nature of the relationships between their parents they didn’t stay close.

After a few weeks re-meeting cousin, he called us and asked us to come to a party at his place. I was his house for all of about 15 minutes when I told cousin that if he ever wanted to sell I’d buy it.

A few years went by and we continued to remodel our house downtown. We took our sweet time, moving out of the first floor for almost a year. That was interesting. Just as we had nearly completed the house, cousin called saying he was ready to sell and did we still want to buy it.

It was gut wrenching. We had poor Bear on a small city lot. It was like 40’ across and 90’ deep and the house took up a lot of that so he didn’t have much room to play. I loved our old house and we’d barely got to enjoy it, but we knew the possibilities of the new place. It was a tough choice. So we put a too high asking price on the place and after a few weeks a Microsoftie couple bought it for that price. So that was that. We bought the farm, as it were and started the whole remodeling process over.

One of the hardest parts for me was moving back home. Technically we’re still in the city but at the very south end, so I console myself that it is middle ground. The fact that I can pop over to Moms and take care of my honey-do lists in a few minutes is a bonus. And we’ll be there as they get older. And I can still get downtown in about 15 minutes.

I was driving around town this afternoon running work errands and just started to notice that they place has grown on me in the last couple of years. It good old points (unnoticed by me when I was young) are still intact and the new buildings and parks are well done It still has the cohesion of a small town.

It’s going through a lot of changes. They’ve finally torn down the acres and acres of the old factories. In their place they’re building all the chain stores you see everywhere. But that well away from the old downtown. Old downtown is quite revitalized with boutiques and good restaurants and funky stuff you don’t find at every mall from here to Boston.

“Home again, home again” is what I always say when we pull into the drive way after a long trip. It’s kind how I feel today.


P.S: I’m all mended up here. I put off the next root canal for 2 weeks since I’m not in pain. I’m just not ready to go back there yet.

Much of a wimp? Yes.