Perhaps this is a day for me to reclaim parts of my personal history. Currents of memory and energy are flowing through me, or maybe it's the Corona with lime and an afternoon on a warm, but shady porch. I enjoyed every moment of a graduation open house in the Kessler Park neighborhood of Oak Cliff. I loved seeing one of my spare sons savoring the moment between major phases of his life.
Imagine if you swam out to the island in the middle of a big lake and paused to sit in the warm shallow water at the shore, soaking up the sunshine, wiggling your toes in the mud, and joking with your fellow swimmers. You know you will be swimming on toward the other side of the lake through water more chilly and choppy, but for the moment you are just happy to be alive and where you are. Sun and joke.
Kessler Park reminds me of Omaha. I lived in north Omaha for six years, and western suburban Omaha for two. My three kids were born in Omaha. I spent precious hours at the fantastic Henry Doorly Zoo, hiking in Fontenelle Forest, using the good public libraries, eating lots of corn-fed beef in wonderful, local family-owned restaurants, sipping afternoon wine in the Old Market, eating catfish at the Surfside Club, and walking in historic neighborhoods. Have stroller, will travel.
When Cliff got a job doing bankruptcy work for a law firm in Omaha, we bought our "starter house" for about $31K. It was a 1950's tract house just north of the delightful neighborhoods of Benson, Country Club, and Dundee. Our house was a one-story three-bedroom with a full basement. Deck on the back, but no garage. Moisture problem in the basement. Snakes. Lots of policemen and state patrol guys lived in the neighborhood. Also people with cars held together with duct tape and ropes. Cottonwood trees, and red lava rock "mulch" straight out of a 3-D sci-fi movie. The house was painted in stripes of three shades of green--lime, avocado, and pistachio. The living room was a pale blue, and the J.C. Penney brocade drapes went oh-so-well with the dead cowhide multi-brown carpet. The kitchen featured a pink sink, pink built-in oven, pink range, and BIG PINK refrigerator with the freezer at the bottom. The kitchen walls were Pepto Bismal pink, I kid you not. Down the stairs to the moldy basement, and you would find an old washing machine, a clothesline, a punching bag, a dangerous furnace, and walls painted in vertical stripes of lime and blue semi-gloss. Not a Martha Stewart look, but a safe spot during a tornado warning.
The bathroom was a classic. The fixtures were yellow, and the wall tiles were brown. One wall had those frightening peel&stick "crinkle" mirror tiles. On down the hall, past the wall safe, were the bedrooms: mint green, orange, and blue.
If you went into the other houses on the block you would find turquoise kitchens and pink bathrooms, or yellow kitchens and turquoise bathrooms. Most houses had a home-improvement sliding glass door from the dining area to the deck addition. We put a giant wading pool on the deck, and spent many afternoons splashing with neighbors. I hate to admit it, but we had macrame plant holders.
While we lived there, the major problem was pesky Jehovah's Witnesses. Later on, our friends had to teach their kids to hit the floor when they heard gunshots.
A mile away, as the stroller flies, were more historic neighborhoods. Benson first, then Country Club, Dundee, and even Happy Hollow. Beyond that, if I was too impatient to wait for a bus, I could walk down Saddle Creek, past the Target, to my volunteer job at Planned Parenthood of Omaha/Council Bluffs.
On the rare days that I had a car, I might take little Jeff and Mike to the Union Pacific Railroad Museum downtown. On those days I would chant to myself the litany of street names: Dodge, Douglas, Farnum, Harney, Howard.
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