Friday, January 11, 2008

Autobiograpy?

What on earth have I gotten myself started on? For some bizarre reason I had the notion that I should write some sort of autobiography. No one on earth is ever going to care. My kids already know any stories I have ever told. There are none that I find particularly interesting. And the likelihood that there will be another generation to care is almost null. So why on earth should I bother. I have LOTS more stuff to do.

But I started to write today because it was SLOWWWW at work. I began with the school at which I attended my first half of Kindergarten. And upon doing a Google search low and behold I found what must be that old school building with a new name about two blocks from where I spent my first five years of life.

We lived on 17152 Roselawn St. just north of McNichols or Six Mile if you use the mile road designations that start at the Detroit River and go all the way out to 32 mile rd. I think, maybe a little farther. Anyway Greenlawn is the street to the east and Northlawn is the street to the west. The Marygrove College campus is south of Six Mile right across from that neighborhood with and the school now named Bates Academy is at the south east corner of the college campus on Greenlawn St. All I remember of the school is the very tall windows in the class room. The photograph of this school, which is certainly old enough to be the one I attended over 55 years ago, shows those very tall windows in the high ceilinged rooms. It looks just like every other brick school building built before the war. I also tried a Google map of 17152 Roselawn St and switched to satellite view. To my delight there is a roof still standing on the lot. We had two lots. My mother gardened in the lot to the south of the house. There is a roof on that lot now. Which makes our house now the second from the alley so I remembered correctly we were in the first block north of Six Mile.

Even if I never finish this so called Autobiography, I have had fun discovering that the old neighborhood in Detroit, viewed from the air, looks better than expected - in other words the roofs of the houses all look intact and there are no empty burned out lots. But I am not brave enough to go driving to discover for sure. "You can't go home" I learned that years ago when we tried to visit my father's uncles home in Jonesville, Michigan. Better to just keep the memories we have or that are created by family photos.

More another day - hehe - well I have created something to write in this Blog - maybe I can make it last 365 days or at least use as filler.

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