Aberdeen

I will start this series of posts by explaining that I am on a vacation with my family to the lovely city of St. Louis. Laugh if you will, but St. Louis is actually a great town, and where I spent many of my deeply formative years. While I am here, instead of clothing, I will post mostly about places that I grew up, and influenced the person I am today. In a way, these are also things handed down to me from my mother and father. This is my first childhood home in St. Louis. I went to the pre-school across the street. I have many, many early childhood memories in this home. Both good and bad. This is the house in which I watched Captian Kangaroo and the Banana Splits. The house where I first saw my parents kiss, the one where I learned to eat a whole smoked whitefish, and conversely ate many TV dinners in. I took place in my first 4th of july bike Parade here, and heard an ice cream truck for the first time. This was also the first house where I saw my parents fight, where there were many locked, and subsequently broken down, doors. Ultimatley, we did not stay in the house very long. Bizarrely, I remember my mom saying that the house was haunted, and that is why we could not stay. Wow, even if there were bats in the belfries, and spirits swinging from the rafters, I do not think I would ever say that to my kids. Now in retrospect, who knows if the home was haunted or it was just my mother dealing with her own demons, but needless to say we moved. God bless my mother in law, who, today, as we were parked across the street from this house, commented on how beautiful the house still was, then quickly added, "well they probably moved you to Ladue for the schools." I'll never know if that was the real cause, but I would like to believe to was. Although ghosts did make a hell of a storty for a kid with a vivid imagination for many many years. The house still looks really similar to the way it was when I lived there, 40 years ago, and even today, the pangs of missing living in that house hit me hard.