Just around the corner and a couple blocks down...lies my alma mater. North High School. The place where some dreams came true... (made the dance team every year, got to hang out on the fringe of the "in" crowd all those years..a big deal back then..) and some dreams were broken. (lost at love, learned to be cynical.)
Walked some more, ended up at my elementary school. Walked in from the back. This is the warming house, where we'd go in to warm up after ice skating on the frozen ice rink they'd create on the adjoining field every year. We'd bring our ice skates and go skating at the noon recess and after school.
The bike racks. It was nice living in a small town where the light traffic, safe neighborhoods and plenty of sidewalks allowed us to ride our bikes to school and home again.
And the houses on our block. This particular one is still owned by the Anger family. what a name, and what a family. I was good friends with the second youngest, a girl just a year older than me. She was the only girl, had about 8 older brothers, one younger. Most were in some kind of trouble with the law, it seemed. The saying "bad company corrupts good character" applies well here. Soon after we became friends, she taught me how to smoke cigarettes, and once her older brother even introduced us to pot in the woods behind their house. This same brother, she told me, once did "dirty stuff" with her...my first encounter with a victim of incest. yuck. I'm glad that friendship ended soon after I got caught smoking once by my parents. We lost touch of each other, I think she became pregnant in junior high school. Her dad still lives at this house, below:
just stuff you think about as you walk down these old streets.
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