turn on the WABAC machine, sherman. OK there I said it after all

Last week, before I time travelled, I went online and did some research.  As I examined my life, I knew it was necessary to go back to where I came from.  Up to now, life has been anticipation:  looking forward to what was going to happen; working toward a future.  Now, life is beginning to be a reflection, looking back at what was and trying to make some sense of it.  Oh, I still anticipate a future.  I have not stopped in the present with no plans for what will be, but where I came from and what I did now seems almost as important as where I am going.

A few years ago I went back to Alden Street and viewed the lot where the first house I lived in used to be, so I already knew the house was no longer there.  However, it was not just the place where I slept and ate, it was the neighborhood where I lived to which I needed to return.  In addition to the cradle where my infant architectural history was nurtured, I needed to wander among the other structures and places where I walked as a lad.

Because I had a couple of paper routes in the general neighborhood, I knew that the big houses across the street were where the rich lived at the time—an area called Parkwood—and I did some research.  What I found piqued my curiosity so I had reason to fire up the WABAC.

Parkwood was not a departure from other upscale areas of Kansas City, with winding streets that didn’t form the normal grids with streets at ninety-degree angles that I was used to.  Parkwood had streets that formed sweeping wyes with semi-triangular islands with flowers and bushes.  This was nothing out of the ordinary for me.  I had seen Westheight in Kansas City, Kansas; Mission Hills and the Country Club Plaza, so I figured this is just how all the upscale areas were built.  However, my research led me to Sid J. Hare.  Sid and his son S, Herbert Hare formed Hare and Hare, a landscape architecture company.  Parkwood was Hare’s first project of note.  Later Hare and Hare laid out Westheight.  J.C. Nichols saw Parkwood and Westheight and hired Hare and Hare to do a shopping area for him—the Country Club Plaza.  Many years later Hare did Mission Woods among a plethora of other things, including the University of Kansas, Wyandotte High School, Loose Park, the Truman Library, ad infinidum.  I have been to most of them and I see the similarities.

So, I set the dials on the WABAC machine and I travelled back to the day.

Parkwood had fallen into disrepair and become a bad area of town fifty years ago or more so I was expecting a ghetto.  I was surprised to see a number of the houses well maintained with yards trimmed and landscaping clipped.  The islands were all weeded and flowers were in bloom.  There were some houses in disrepair with elderly cars parked by them but I was surprised by the condition of the area.  There were four upscale-looking guys on the tennis court playing doubles and there were no cars around so I am assuming the walked there.  So far, so good.

I drove back down Quindaro Boulevard and was surprised to find a couple of blocks of new houses, some under construction, and drove west to 17^th Street and went south toward Alden.  For some reason, many of the streets in the old neighborhood are one way, so I had to drive around for a while before I could get myself where I could drive north down Alden.  I parked in front of the vacant lot that used to be the old homestead and took some photos.

A neighbor come out of her house and asked me if I was the guy who was going to cut down the tree.  I told her I was not a tree trimmer and explained that I used to live there fifty years ago and was taking photos of where I used to live.  She came out and talked to me for a while and I told her about where my old house was and the garage.  Her house, sitting next door to where I used to live was two years old.  There were three new houses on the block that were not there last time I visited.  I told her I was going to walk around the lot if she didn’t mind and she told me to be careful.  I’m not sure of what I should be careful, but she probably figured I was a doddering elderly person who might fall and not be able to get up.

Anyway, the yard that seemed so large when I was a child, seemed miniscule to my elderly eyes.  I walked to the middle of the back yard, where second base had been in our waffle ball games and looked toward where the outfield fence had been and then home plate.  I remembered it took a mighty swing to put that waffle ball over the fence when I was a kid, but now I could almost spit from second base and hit the outfield wall or home plate.  And, I have worked on construction sites where there were gentlemen who could put some serious distance between their lips and their spittle, their mucus or their sputum, and I was not a guy who could match their distance, or even spit very far.

I took some pictures of what was now so I could have the record to compare in my mind to what used to be.  Few landmarks were the same.  None of the yard was recognizable.  There was a large walnut tree where the house had been.  My knowledge of trees was that walnuts take a long time to grow, so the house must have been razed many years ago.  I was hoping, much like Ponce de Leon that I had found the wellspring of my youth, but though I stood among the ghosts of the past, I was still old.  I guess the problem was that nothing was the same.  Even the lay of the land was different.  The side yard, which used to be a serious enough slope we could use it for sledding in winter snows, had been dozed to a lazy grade.   The front door of the house was on the main floor and the back door in the basement opened to a level just below the level of the back yard.  Now the grade was more uniform.  The landmarks of my youth were gone and things were so changed that it was hard to determine the exact place they used to be.  After all, it has been fifty years since I walked these grounds.  A half a century can erase some memories.

I guess I wanted some moment of epiphany—some recollection that brought me back to a time when a young boy ran the width and breadth of this property.  It didn’t happen.  In one regard it was good to be back but it was almost like coming home to a place I had never been.  There were some good times I had in this house and in this yard, but there was no house and the yard, for all I know, might have been six feet below me, forever covered by the bulldozer’s blade.

It was melancholy to be home but just as good to be going.  It was home no more and the WABAC had other destinations to which it would take me.  It was time to travel again and I will detail those further adventures later.