Another Hundred Years

We had been up all night patrolling the neighborhood against arson. Roderick crashed around 2a.m. to catch some sleep before having to go into work, the volunteers went home around 4a.m. and I headed to what we hoped would be our new house for one more walk-about before bed.

Peeking out of the partially boarded windows of 515 Millard, I think: "This. *this* is where we'll live:

519 Millard looks so peacefully watchful as ill-considered paint fades from its brick exterior. The Jefferson apartment building sleeps quietly among bits of broken glass waiting patiently for its next life to begin. Across the street - on the other side of the empty lot where the O'Keefe place once stood - 509 Owen sits under the remains of its weather vane wanting to be loved by more than the dozen-or-so cats that live under its porches. The sadly-gray Barie house on Jefferson sighs and sinks a little lower into its cellar as another rented moving truck passes without stopping to bring a new tenant’s things to the New Amadore. Across Jefferson sits Rick and Chummy's place with its gables and chimneys leaning so protectively over it that the torque occasionally pops a slate from the tired roof.

Looking out on all this through the wavy, bubbly window glass of our new-old house makes me wonder: Maybe the world hasn't changed all that much in a hundred years. Not really. Maybe it's just the window glass that's changed.

The Hundred and First Acre Wood?

I think we wanted to move to Saginaw because we felt a little trapped. Who was to know that one town over there existed a strange district that seemed to exist only to those who knew it existed... a sort of Hundred-Acre-Wood with gritty edge. Who was to know that the furthest corner of the world stood within a ring of floundering businesses and crumbling warehouses in the inner city, and – as with most good things – you only needed to know the place existed to get there.


Photo Of the District taken from the sixth floor of the Bearinger Building.

Nesting

Roderick:
"We've hardly been in Old Town at all...Are we annoyed with somebody, or is it just a change of habits? I can't remember..."

When come the cooler nights toward the end of summer, we begin nesting. We look into the panrty and wonder if we have enough loose tea to last through to spring and make a list of people we will to dinner so we don't have to drive in the snow. Winter is a time for nesting as the snow wraps the city and the world gets smaller.
SPM

Fall again...

"Some things are so wonderful they cannot be described as they actually are, so - instead - we can only try to make clear how precious they are to us"
SPM