STREET-VIEWING THE PAST

`````I wonder how many people have used Google Street-view to look at the places that they lived as kids, or taken the opportunity to tour their childhood school. It was Thomas Wolfe who said it best; "You can't go home again."

`````For there is much more that ties us to a time and place then mere physical structure or locale. It is the people who inhabited those homes, the smells of what we swore was the best bakery going or the sounds of those AM Classics we attempted to sing along to.

`````Streetview doesn't photograph the back alleys, which was the preferred highway of our youth. It was there that we'd make our mark; not in the form of grafitti, but as hop-scotch squares on the asphalt. We all knew a maze of short cuts from alley to driveway. Backlanes held the promise of discarded pop bottles, and then we'd be off to the store.

`````On the hill where I lived, my beloved trees are gone as are my mother's flower beds. What was once one property has been divided into two. Thus, the funky house with the balcony which ran around the entire length of the structure is gone. My cousin had streaked it on a dare one sleep-over.

`````I used Streetview to position myself at the top of the hill from which we ran. It was very steep, and on two occasions a car had rolled down the hill and crashed into the bedroom of the house at the bottom where my friend Joanne lived.

`````I still have a slight scar on my left knee from one of our races, as we'd cast ourselves headlong down Oxford. We'd grab the stop-sign at the bottom with such force that my shoulder would jolt.

`````As I move my cursor along, I miss the sounds. I recall the cadence of the sport's announcer's voice when the game was on in the evening. For my memories are usually of summer, thus the open windows and extended days. The concrete would radiate the heat well into the evening hours as we sat on the low curbs and talked, plucking at the reedy grass stalks behind us.

`````The images on my computer are devoid of any emotion. There are buildings, but the faces of the neighbours who watched us play from behind the windows are gone. Maybe in today's world their protective eye holds as much worth as those lovely felled trees. Where did those birds go? The ones whose blue eggs we'd find each spring, year after year. This street has no connection to my memory of where I grew up at all. The monster house sits upon the grass where I'd lay and hug my dog. The vast tangle of sweet peas no longer beguile with their charmingly soft scent. Long since torn up.

`````No, you can't go home again-----don't even try it.