Wednesday, September 15, 2004
Lair Hill
You know the YMCA on Barbur Blvd. next to Dunaway Park and the half mile oval that brings out the ambulance to watch over joggers on hot days. You know where Hooker Street (no...named after General Hooker in the Civil War!) connects to Barbur and First Avenue and if you live in those apartments on the south side of the street across from the tennis courts, you can smell the black powder from the Fourth of July fireworks carried on the breeze. And you know that if you walk up First where the street curves under Front Avenue and connects to Corbett, you could see a building with a set of steps that ends at a wall.
Well those three steps connected to a door that had been covered up in some recent remodeling. I stood on the top step, nose against the wall and wondered if in some dimension the door could still be opened. If I could find the key would I be able to walk through to the time when the door was the main access to commerce or family that used the building. If I could walk through that door could I go back to an earlier time and choose computer programming instead of sales, hold Microsoft instead of selling when it doubled, buy beach property in Manzanita, OR.
I have just one regret. I drove back to Lair Hill where I once lived to take a photo of those steps. Now, there is just my memory under a new building guarded by two golden hammers.
Well those three steps connected to a door that had been covered up in some recent remodeling. I stood on the top step, nose against the wall and wondered if in some dimension the door could still be opened. If I could find the key would I be able to walk through to the time when the door was the main access to commerce or family that used the building. If I could walk through that door could I go back to an earlier time and choose computer programming instead of sales, hold Microsoft instead of selling when it doubled, buy beach property in Manzanita, OR.
I have just one regret. I drove back to Lair Hill where I once lived to take a photo of those steps. Now, there is just my memory under a new building guarded by two golden hammers.
