The old hood

I drove through my old neighborhood the other day { in an effort to avoid crazy local traffic }.

Isn’t it funny how big things seem when we are little? The streets and trees and the houses! they were all so big when I was young!! Of course the neighborhood is not the same as when I was young, especially the house my dad lived in.  The tree on the side of the house that we planted together is no longer there.  The evergreen tree we had years of Christmas card photos taken in front of is now giant.  The drain grate that my friends and I painted grass green every summer is chipped and peeling and in need of a coat of that “doesn’t quite match the grass” paint.

I kind of felt like a giant. I remembered how long the road seemed, especially around the “big loop” when I rode my rainbow-colored bike with the yellow banana seat and tassels. As I drove down the big hill I remembered how we used to FLY down it on our bikes, scared we weren’t going to make it to the bottom without crashing and how we went the long way home just so we didn’t have to go back up that big hill.

The boat ramp was huge when we were little – it was THE place to go sledding…straight onto the frozen lake. It was so hard to get back up with those sleds, especially because the sleds were bigger than we were.

{I wanted to put some lovely pictures, including some of me as a kid in here, but the pictures my dad gave me of slides are missing a LOT}