Noon. You are sitting in the car facing northwest on the curb parking at old Westerville Park after each eating two doughnuts from Schneider's Bakery. Alum Creek is on your left and the ball diamond is below on the right. Carol is reading Baldacci’s The Guilty. You can hear the bell chimes from Otterbein's Tower's Hall. The huge Sycamore trees still stand tall where you used to play in the wading pool when you were three and four. The craft's log cabin is still in place. Lots of memories from ages three right up into your twenties when you kissed a girl or two in the evening but cleaned the park (one of your many jobs) during the day while working for the city in the summer. - Amorella
1210 hours. When I was five I remember watching Uncle Ernie pitch fast balls for his team. There was all a big crowd when Uncle Ernie and his brother were playing. Also, in those days everyone was down to watch the fireworks on the Fourth of July -- the quiet peaceful village that it was. There's a climbing station where the wading pool used to be and I don't see the teeter-totters -- slides and swings are there though and a fake train for climbing. A band shell still exists though it's a modernized remake. It is hard to believe I am seventy-five years old and we are coming back to my hometown, to Westerville and Otterbein. We went by the house and they were putting the copper roof on front porch, the place is slowly getting dressed. Fun. It's fun to be starting over by returning to your roots. Carol's too in that when she was four and five she played in the same park when visiting her Grandma and Grandpa Cook who lived on West Main, a city block from the park itself. I like to think that in those days my sister Cathy was four to five too and we would still come down to the park on the weekends visiting grandparents. Maybe they played together or nearby. I would have been somewhere around ten at the time.
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