A few weeks ago I first heard a song that really spoke to me. The name of the song is “The House That Built Me” by Miranda Lambert. When I heard the song and listened to the lyrics, it stirred up memories from my childhood growing up at 2119 E. Griffith Way.
This week I took a trip back to Fresno to visit my family, Mom, sister, two sons, and my two grandkids. Since I had not seen my old house in many years, I decided to drive over to my old neighborhood a take a look at the house at 2119 E. Griffith Way.
I pulled the car to a stop, set the parking brake, and shut off the engine, ans sat across the street from from 2119 E. Griffith Way. It was very quiet on the street and I just thought that I would absorb the atmosphere. As I sat in the car and just stared at the old house the old memories started flowing through my brain.
There in the front yard the crape myrtle that we used to jump over for years had finally gotten a chance to grow! For many years that poor little tree never had gotten over about 3 feet tall. The main reason for that was, as kids, we used to run and attempt to jump over it. Sometimes we were not successful and would break off some of the tree trunk.
The visions of all four of boys playing “sock ball” over the years on the lawn up along the right side of the driveway flashed through my brain. “Sock ball” was like baseball. We would get our old socks that had holes in them and gather them, putting one inside another to make a ball. Man some of those games were fierce! As the years progress, we played wiffle ball, that would make the game a little different.
As I gazed over the back fence, there were still some remnants of Dad’s garden. The peach trees and the orange trees were still thriving. The boysenberries were gone, but the wires that they used to grow on were still there.
The old street has changed dramatically since Highway 41 came through and took most of the houses. During my youth, there were some very competitive games of “home run derby” out in the street. Talk about competitive games, the “wheelie” contests on our bicycles were legendary! Wow, the memories were now flowing like a raging river through my mind. It felt like a dam had burst at its seams and all these memories were just gushing through my head like a raging river!
Then the realization set in, I had been sitting in my car for over an hour, reminiscing over memories that, in some cases, were over 50 years old! That little blonde haired, snotty nosed kid that I saw running and jumping over the crepe myrtle, playing “sock ball”, annoying my siblings, popping wheelies, was none other than me!
It was at that point that, once again, that the Miranda Lambert song that I alluded to in the beginning of this article played in my head!
It was at this point that I realized that I was truly at “The House That Built Me”!
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