The Block

Why in old age do we go backward instead of forward?

There’s so much to think about in the present, like doctor’s appointments, collecting the garbage for pick up days, wondering what to make for lunch and dinner, why are the costs of everything going up?  But pleasant thoughts, for me, always return me to my childhood and my summer days spent in Oneida, New York.

Take a journey with me now to this small town halfway between Syracuse and Utica and locate on your map 210 Sconondoa Street.  To find it you’d have to drive out of the quaint downtown area and onto a street leading out of town, down near the railroad tracks.

Past what used to be Ruby’s lumber yard, you’ll see a dilapidated four-story building, all boarded up and think to yourself, someone should tear that ugly piece of real estate down.  Well, then, what would the firefighters use for training?  As that’s what it’s become, where I used to spend my glorious summers.

I drive by there every time I pass through Oneida, which hasn’t been often recently.  I force my kids to get out of the car and tell them how this used to be a magical place for me.  I point out the stoop where my grandfather would stand to welcome us.

We called it the Block.  It’s a shell now, but in my mind I can still climb the stairs to the first floor apartment where my grandparents lived.  I can cross the hallway and knock on the door of Old Granny’s apartment, my great grandmother, and she’ll offer me a piece of stale chocolate from gift boxes of long ago.  Then up two more flights of stairs and there are four other apartments, filled with my aunts and uncles, my cousins, my life.

But, all boarded up now—except in my mind where it lives again.

There’s an expression: twice-told tales.  As I grew older, I loved sitting at the kitchen table with my mother while she filled in all the back stories of great aunts and uncles I vaguely recall and then all the people I knew so well from my youth.  We all have our own family sagas, don’t we.  Stories that have been told and retold that bring us joy or sorrow, maybe a mix of both.

As my mind wanders back to those glorious summers at the Block, to all the people I loved so dearly, I know that where I came from comforts me still as the days grow shorter.