A DOG NAMED HONEY WEST

Beautiful weather here.  Early afternoon, dappled sun on our deck, I brought a book outside to read.  Since Honey West doesn't know how to read, she decided to nap.  When I caught her snoozing I couldn't resist taking out my phone...

Click.  She woke up... "Hey... I'm trying to sleep here."

A Bit about Moving and Memory

Memory.  A few folks have commented on my ability to remember so many things from past decades.   I credit much of it to circumstances that let me link time and place together so often  Why?  Because from birth to age 17, I called many places home.  Until I was nearly 5 I lived on our family's Harris farm.  Then we moved to Silver Bay where we first lived in the trailer park, in two different cabins.  Not sure why we moved but I think the second one was larger.  I do remember it was nearer the laundry center.

After the trailer court we moved to our first house on Charles Circle.  In 1959, because of the national steel strike, we moved back to Harris for the summer.  In the fall, back to S.B., I began third grade at Campton.  Then, we moved back to the farm again, this time presumably forever.  But, instead, we returned to Silver Bay after only a few months and I returned to Mrs. Lyson's third grade class at Campton.  {I will someday write an essay on the whys and whats and the family angst during this move back to the farm.  Also about my months going to school in North Branch as the "new girl" - I'm convinced I was on my way to becoming a juvenile delinquent.}

But in winter 1960, with Daddy back working at Reserve, we lived in a Beaver Bay trailer for perhaps a month. My memories of that Beaver Bay trailer include its location -  down a short unpaved road on the side towards the lake, and watching the winter Olympics in black and white on a TV affixed high in a corner of the kitchen area. After the trailer we moved to a three-bedroom slab on Banks Boulevard, across from Campton.  I lived on Banks the rest of third grade through seventh.  Then Mom said she'd rather have a basement house than a slab so we moved to Gibson Road.   I also suspect she wanted me to live nearer the high school - she always worried I'd get hit by a car on that busy road called Banks.

I think living in so many homes, unless you're with a nomadic tribe or in the military, is unusual.  I also think it helped me organize my own internal memory files. At least that's my theory.

THOUGHTS OF HOME, AND WHAT IT MEANS...

The other day I heard the phrase "earth is our common home." I've been mulling over the idea of home for some time. What is the meaning of home? What does the word mean today?

 

People move around so much. Some buy houses - or until recently they bought houses - not to create a home but to buy a temporary house, always planning to move to a bigger, better house. I grew up in a town that was bulldozed from the wilderness. An instant town. Most everyone in my high school's graduating class knew from kindergarten through senior year that our stay in this new town was temporary. 

When I was young and read stories about people and places where houses belonged to generation after generation of the same family - it was a foreign concept to me.

At the beginning of Western Literature Homer tells us of Odysseus, yearning for home. But just yesterday on the radio I heard the phrase "earth is our common home." What does the very word mean? Why is home important? Why do people yearn to leave home and go back home?