Ah, the irony . . .

A few months back, my brother, who happens to be a bishop in Iona, was interviewing a new couple moving into his ward. He found out they were counselors, setting up a home where they could work with troubled young men. The man began to describe the ramshackle old home they'd bought to convert into their home for wayward boys, and asked Al if he knew the house.

"Know the house," he replied, "I grew up in it."

Yes, the house on Hitt Road where we all grew up is now a home for wayward boys.

Slightly ironic, not even considering that we boys weren't all that wayward, at least by modern standards.

But it got me to thinking about that old house, squeezed between the welding gas supply company and the Kennels -- the neighbors, not, literally, kennels with the small K:

• Does that closet in the bedroom still have the hole in the drywall where the older kids "stashed" money, and where we younger kids, not having money, stashed Monopoly money?
• Would the new homeowners consider letting me go on a pseudo-archaeological dig on the grounds to search out bones of long-gone family pets and the numerous bags of Legos, marbles and other such stuff that we buried as treasure there?
• Is the "guest house" Dad built -- it used to be a chicken coop -- still there, complete with the hand-made four-poster built-in bed?
• Are the chicken tracks still in the concrete in the woodshed?
• Is the woodshed still there?
• Does it still say "W is here" above the door of the bedroom Al built for himself in the garage? (I understand the guy who owns the house now is using that room as his office.) Jeff painted the graffiti there in black model paint; the "w" stands for "woman," one of their big insult words back then. Wouldn't work these days.
• Do the power lines across the street still hum loudly when it's cold and wet?
• Is the shutoff valve for the water still in that little compartment underneath the plank in the laundry room?

I don't know that I could live in that house any more. It's world has diminished. The house, of course, is still the same, or so I imagine, not having been in it in about ten years. But in those intervening ten years, other people have lived there, making it their house, burying their own memories in the back yard and such. The vacant lots across the street and to the north, where we used to ride our bikes and dig and play and hide, are now occupied by businesses. The big hunks of concrete we used as aircraft carriers are no longer there. The enormous hollow metal posts holding up the sign for the Northgate Industrial Park, filled with pigeons and guano, are no longer there. Why do I remember such pedestrian stuff with such fondness? Guess it's because it's where I grew up.

The neighborhood where we live now, where our kids are being raised, feels sterile in comparison. No dangerous businesses to nose around in, to pilfer through Dumpsters for cardboard and other treasures. No fields in which to make bicycle tracks, because everything is such private, keep-off-my-grass anymore these days. But of course that's my adult perception. My kids, when they begin to wander, may see things differently. They may do as we did back then: Play in the fields no matter whether the property owners wanted us there or not. It's all a matter of perception. And my perception is a bit cloudier these days, cluttered with parental responsibility, the same kind of thing I tolerated as a kid, but mostly rolled my eyes at when I knew eye-rolling was an acceptable commentary on the ways parents do things.