{"id":1512,"date":"2012-09-09T19:01:42","date_gmt":"2012-09-10T02:01:42","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/mikebellah.com\/wordpress\/?p=1512"},"modified":"2012-09-10T05:21:29","modified_gmt":"2012-09-10T12:21:29","slug":"walking-by-the-old-house","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mikebellah.com\/?p=1512","title":{"rendered":"Walking by the Old House"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/a>Walked by my old house yesterday. The four-bedroom ranch structure that Sternenberg Lumber Company built for Bob Bellah in 1957 hasn\u2019t been occupied by my family since 1968.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s only a few blocks from where I now live, but I hardly ever pass it\u2014one, because it\u2019s not on the way anywhere and, two, because the memory is bittersweet. You see, only half of our six are left. Mom and Dad are gone, as is my little sister, D\u2019Lynne.<\/p>\n

Thought of her when I noticed the narrow, brick entrance to the long pear-shaped driveway. Every few weeks my sister\u2014who never seemed able to back her car in a straight line\u2014managed to topple a few bricks on one side or the other.<\/p>\n

I grinned to see that there were recent signs of similar damage and wondered if the current family has a similarly challenged driver.<\/p>\n

The towering willow is gone from the front yard. They don\u2019t last long in our West Texas soil. But the blue spruce is still there\u2014a giant where we planted a sapling. Again I smiled, wondering what the current owners would think if they knew they were nurturing a stolen conifer, plucked illegally over 50 years ago from the\u00a0Carson National Forest outside Red River.<\/p>\n

There were other memories: teenaged boys playing Horse on the hoop over the garage, Dad with his boys hosing off the ski boat after a weekend at Buffalo Lake, eager children unwrapping presents beneath a huge Christmas tree framed by the big picture window which faced the street.<\/p>\n

Seemed strange\u2014to walk by my house, a stranger. I felt I deserved a wave, a smile, some kind of recognition. But no one was home\u2014wouldn\u2019t know me anyway\u2014and \u00a0the neighbors are all new.<\/p>\n

Made me\u00a0wonder what my kids will one day think when they walk by the house where I no longer live. Anyway, I have a bit more appreciation for others with similar feelings, like the fearless Commanche who once hunted buffalo here or the rugged cowboys who followed.<\/p>\n

Maybe the Indians had it right. The land doesn’t belong to us as much as we to the land. We just get to enjoy it for a while.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Walked by my old house yesterday. The four-bedroom ranch structure that Sternenberg Lumber Company built for Bob Bellah in 1957 hasn\u2019t been occupied by my family since 1968. It\u2019s only a few blocks from where I now live, but I hardly ever pass it\u2014one, because it\u2019s not on the way anywhere and, two, because the […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_mi_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1512","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mikebellah.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1512","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mikebellah.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mikebellah.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mikebellah.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mikebellah.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1512"}],"version-history":[{"count":6,"href":"https:\/\/mikebellah.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1512\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1520,"href":"https:\/\/mikebellah.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1512\/revisions\/1520"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mikebellah.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1512"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mikebellah.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1512"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mikebellah.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1512"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}