Homestead

CHAPTER THIRTY ONE: Life at the White House

In which our hero goes back 30 years.

[Saturday afternoon, October 4th, Metamora, IL]

"200 W Rohman (Roman?). I don't remember much about living there, or even how long it was that I lived there. Unless I've forgotten somewhere, that was where we (1) ended up after moving from Eureka. I have no idea why it was that we left Eureka in the first place. 200 WR was where I was living during the blizzard of 77-78. I had a large snow cave by the driveway (2). I remember having this gold colored toy space gun that shot these neon colored plastic discs (3). I remember that pennies or dimes also worked in it (4). I remember buying Charlie Brown books from one of the neighbor kids and relating way too much to the title character (5). I remember lying to my peers at the time about seeing Star Wars so I could fit in to the group better. I remember having a snap together model of a WWII German tank (6) that I put together and took apart incessantly. I remember the room in the basement that they (7) called a 'bomb shelter'. I remember 'be home by five' before dinner, and 'be home when the street lights come on' after dinner."

(1) The family at the time. I can't remember if Janette had been born yet or not. Maybe it was Jennifer's arrival, or soon to be arrival that prompted the departure from Eureka. If that were the case, the case could be made that the main reason for departing 200 WR was the arrival or imminent arrival of Jeanette. But I don't remember the exact timeline. Go figure.

(2) Or maybe I was a lot smaller and the cave was of no great or impressive size. I want to say that I named it 'Fort Power' or some such thing.

(3) It ended up being the first clip fed, sawed off weapon I ever owned.

(4) But to far less distance and effect. The only advantage of the coins was that they were easier to come by than the discs the gun was meant to shoot.

(5) That would be a good indicator that there was something not quite right with me even at that age. Other kids wanted to be Luke Skywalker or Darth Vader, yet I found a reflection of myself in Charlie Brown. The main difference being my little red haired girl ended up being a blonde.

(6) Or some such armored vehicle. I remember it was molded grey and had tracks.

(7) The parents. Really I think it was a small pantry/storage area or some such thing.


** Much to Cromag's annoyance, I have been adding all sorts of little doodads to my blog page. One thing I've wanted for a while was a way to have some type of music player that I could load with whatever music was in heavy rotation for me at any given time. So I went out and found just such an add-on. Then I discovered something. The program supports MP3 format, which is what I've been encoding anything I bring in from tape or LP as. Turns out that when I rip things from CD, they get encoded as WMA files, which the player does not support. I was not happy, as a tad more than 2/3 my music is in this particular format. I then ventured onto the 'net to find a conversion program by which I could change WMA files to MP3 files. I now have that program, and have to decide how much of my music I want to change. Then, I have to figure out how to use the add-on program, then I have to load it into my blog, then you can be further annoyed by my choice in music.