Being young has it's advantages, but one big disadvantage is the inability to go back to a place after a long period of time. I was almost 40 before that began to happen to me. Several memorable places stand out:

1. Aunt Victoria's house in Prestonsburg, Kentucky. I was gone from there for almost 30 years. When I went back, I found that her house was larger because of several additions, but the old rooms were smaller because I was larger. The sidewalk across the back yard to the riverbank was about half as long as I remembered and the river seemed hardly a creek. The walk to downtown had seemed like a mile when I was 12, but in reality was only about three blocks.

2. Ft. Pierce, Florida. I left there in 1952 and didn't see it again until 1969. I still stop by when I am in that part of Florida, but sometimes I wish I had never gone back. The Ft. Pierce of the early '50's is almost completely gone. It's almost like two different places and I like the one in my memory better.

3. Venice Park, a street in Lexington, Kentucky. At the end of the cul-de-sac there is a white house with a garage behind it. It's the first house I remember. I learned to walk and talk there. We moved away when I was four. I went back about 50 years later, and remarkably little had changed. It seemed much smaller than it was when I was a child, but that is a normal reaction to a place you left when you were little.

4. West High School, Nashville, Tennessee. I attended West for two years and graduated there in 1953. 45 years later, I walked in the front door and the years fell away. Nothing about the building had changed. But it was no longer a high school. I walked directly to my locker, then went through the auditorium and walked across the stage where I played a non-speaking role in "Hamlet" a long time ago. Or was that just last week? I walked into my old senior English class and except for different chairs, it was the same. I sat on the front steps for a while because that was a favorite hang-out back then. Then I left, with most of the memories intact.

Young folks can't do that stuff.
Howard