Return to the scene of the time

I have moved back to the suburbs after living in the city since, basically, my second year of college in 1967. That is 36 years. I really only lived in the 'burbs from 58 to 67, not even as long as I spent at my last place, a duplex in South Minneapolis. But they were the years between me at the age of 10 and me at the age of 19: not years to be trifled with.

In the suburbs. Well, New Hope in the late fifties barely qualified as a suburb. It was more of the exurb, the last ring of city serviced townships before the wholly rural landscape took control. We lived in a small, less than five block, development and frankly I think we were on bottled gas and unpaved streets until 61 or 62. Much of the summer for the first few years was taken up with building forts in the surrounding stands of oak and pine among the farmers fields. And we built professionally, because the development was churning constantly with new blocks of houses going up from the foundations. One of my clearest memories is standing between newly masoned cinderblock basement walls and the dirt sides of the foundation hole, hiding in a game of tag, or just breathing the perfume of fresh dirt and cement mingled.

As good Christian kids we wouldn't steal anything of much value, but the broken or cast off two by fours, flooring grade plywood off cuts, bent nails, conduit, junction box punchouts, etc we did find made for first rate hideouts and forts. I had been in the kid-sized building trades for a year already, thanks to living next to a landfill in Omaha that received entire houses as offerings. When I showed the kids in New Hope how to hammer, straighten out bent nails, draw a guide line with a pencil and a straight edge for sawing: they knew they were in the presence of someone who wanted to spell fort with a capital "F." Since I had four sisters and one of them could beat any two of us up, we didn't advertise the "no girls allowed" much less spell with a backward "s".

This past weekend I mowed my own lawn with my own lawnmower, more or less (story below) for the first time since the summer of '92. But for reasons it will take me years to understand, I feel as though this house is really my very first house that I really own, and Sara has said the same thing despite her sharing title to one house and responsibility for several others.

Moving to the suburbs happened so quickly in a setting fraught with so many extenuating circumstances, that I barely acknowledged the fact. At one point I thought our new home was due south of our family home at what had been 8124 Zenith back in '58. But a check of the map proved we were many blocks east.

Going into Home Depot with a list of items the first time was a valhalla like experience for me. Especially since I had given myself permission to go a few thou into debt in honor of the magnitude of the event of owning a home with Sara finally. We got a fireproof pad for the Weber for our deck. We have a deck! I got shelves for the garage. We have a garage! and so on...

But the incident that really drove home the point of living in our own home, and living in the suburbs, happened Sunday night, when I was lying next to Sara as she went into an early sound sleep, precious and well earned by her unpacking efforts all day long. I had the sunday paper. Instead of the news and arts sections, or metro and sports, I turned to the first of the ad inserts. It was for Menards lumber, and featured garage doors and shed kits, dispose-alls and 2x4's. I read every page. I proceeded to read every insert, for mattresses and furniture, siding and garden hose, you name it. After I had read every insert, I read every ad on every page of the regular paper, skipping the articles. With each offer, I imagined the small or large transformation of our new suburban home implied by its acceptance. I stopped at the classifieds. Even my romantic nature didn't have the stamina to tackle that gargantuan lode of material lures.

In the course of an hour or so I redid the bathroom several times, converted the garage into a workshop, then a bedroom, then two bedrooms, then back to a workshop, and built a new garage out into the driveway. I built a shed in the backyard, an observatory, a treehouse. I opened the wall between the kitchen and dining room, tried out several combinations of leather and microfiber furniture arrangements in the living room. I put on vinyl and steel siding, then went back to wood. I rebuilt the deck, reroofed the house, installed zone controls in the heating air conditioning and several competing styles of skylights and vents in the bathroom.

As page after page of the fat paper slipped onto the floor, and I narrowed the pile down to the home electronics superstores which would have me outfitted in floor standing speakers, surround sound in several rooms, wireless audio throughout the house, and cable and satellite feeds both driving the 40" plasma televisions in every room, I began to drift off. The paper was getting too heavy, and I was blurring the distinction between reality and dream. But I realized, that after all these years, with the best friend in the world next to me helping me out, I was finally building the one thing I had been dreaming of all my life. But I still wouldn't be spelling girls with a backward "s" on this, my last best Fort.