God Bless Google Street View. I say this because they haven't gotten to the street I live on yet. I also say this because they DO have my childhood home on there.

And, in looking at it, WHAT THE HELL DID THEY DO TO OUR YARD??? They seem to have put some stucco on the outside too, or at least painted it an ugly stucco color. And the rocks! The entire front yard is ROCKS! Please don't respond and tell me it's an acceptable alternative to a yard, I say it's just LAZY. It makes the yard look tiny. The orange tree is gone (I think we got three oranges the whole time we had it. The giant pine tree is gone. The Japanese plum tree is still standing but I guarantee you the new owners aren't enjoying them as much as we did. Oh, that remains the most delicious fruit I've ever tasted.

The house two over is STILL overgrown. I know the Chambers still live in the neighborhood. I wonder if the Moores still live in their old house and I wish I knew what Angie was up to; last I heard she had a baby as a teenager and was living at home (she was in her 20s). In 1999 we drove past her old house and saw an unsupervised child playing in the street--this apple did NOT fall far from the tree (I met Angie because her unsupervised four-year-old self walked right up to me shortly after we moved in).

My virtual bike ride also reminded me how ugly FL can be (sorry, Angi and Samantha).

I also looked up a certain hardware store in Cleveland, OH. Back when I worked for the seed co we were sent to Ohio. One of the stores was an old hardware store in a somewhat undesirable part of town. It was the kind of place you really don't see around much anymore. i remember the owner was very old, and they didn't sell the minimum amount of seed for the season. Our rules were that if the minimum wasn't met we'd leave enough seed to make up the minimum and they'd cut us a check for the amount. Well, he refused to pay the minimum and I just let it go. This man, the owner, was very old and I wasn't sure how much longer he'd run the store. According to google it still stands but the sign was taken down at some point (is there a way to see when the google maps folks took their street view pics?). It was likely one of the last reminders of what the neighborhood used to be.

Labels: past, youth