A Queen City childhood.
A little, brick ranch on Fugate Avenue. I don’t remember the house. Or the yard. Or my life there. I was two when we moved out.
I do remember wood walls, not the sheets of thin, wood paneling, but solid wood walls. Scores of wood stacked side by side to form the walls of my first home. And a small wooden shelf. On that shelf was a glass jar, the kind with the flip top glass lid, full of glass marbles. Glass on glass on wood on wood. So much wood. It was the only thing that existed. I was too young to appreciate the workmanship that went into crafting those wooden walls but the marbles…I loved those marbles. I remember them thirty years later as if I’m still staring at them through the glass jar. Without them there was no break in the monotony of the walls but when the sun shone through them, their colors brought the walls to life. I would watch the colors dance like a giant kaleidoscope. A musical with tiny dancers wearing greens and blues and reds and yellows, singing a song only I could hear. When the windows were open, they would dance to the music coming from the auditorium at the end of the road.
Thistle Porch 