Last update: May 2022
As a dad, I’ve had the honor to raise two wonderful daughters while living in the same house, the same neighborhood, in a town that dates back to the early 20th century. As a parent, I have watched my kids heading off to school, riding buses here and there, walking down the main shopping thoroughfare: were their experiences any different than mine growing up?
Westmoreland, where I rew up, was once part of the suburban growth happening in Portland at the beginning of the 20th century, following the Eastside Railway’s streetcar tracks that were laid to the intersection of Bybee and Milwaukie. Whatever Westmoreland once was, it had become an established white collar and working-class neighborhood, full of families and older residents who had once raised their families here, when my parents and older brother moved in in 1959.
I’ll leave it for the anthropologists to fill in the whys and whens. Or read the book by Gail and Michael Evans-Hatch, The Development of Sellwood-Moreland (2015).
But it wasn’t just a place, it was also a time. The 1960s and 1970s: riots downtown, long-haired bands playing music in the park, the Vietnam War, JFK, LBJ, Nixon, Watergate. These were the backdrop to a young life.
My memories of Westmoreland start with grand maple trees that stretched down both sides of 19th street where 7524 was situated. We had a pair of hawthorne trees out front; the house next door had mountain ash trees. These trees saw everything: people moving in and out, new cars in the driveway, new family members being pushed in strollers, as well as the deceased rolled out on stretchers.
Our house was tiny then and it seems even smaller now: Zillow lists the house with just over 1,000 square feet, built in 1921. We used to say that the square footage did not include the basement. Now that’s something you don’t see in new houses! When we were first married, Concetta and I moved into a 1200 square foot apartment in Lake Oswego. I can’t image raising a family in that space, but I think the house on 19th was sufficiently broken up to provide personal spaces, albeit tiny.
That basement could be creepy, but it served many purposes: laundry room, storage cabinets under the stairs stocked with raspberry, strawberry jams and jellies, plus the family favorite “prune butter.” There were storage shelves tucked behind an oil furnace, storing my parents’ college papers as well as the Halloween and Christmas decorations.
One third of the basement had been once dedicated as a playroom where my brother Chris set up “Dinky Town” and later an HO train layout on a plywood sheet. Later, when Dinky Town was gone, half of that playroom space would become a teenage bedroom, the walls of which made from inexpensive sheet paneling plus a drop in ceiling. Chris would occupy the room first, then I moved in during high school.
The rest of the house seemed big growing up: a “Pullman” kitchen, dining room with built in cabinets, living room, one tiny bathroom and extra room on the main floor. A steep stairway led to two bedrooms tucked under the pitched roof. Mom and dad would later “remodel” the bathroom, update the kitchen and add a larger closet using the attic space adjacent their bedroom. I would paint my upstairs bedroom brick red and add a built in bed with rollout drawers for clothes.
The backyard was engulfed by a gnarly cherry tree on the south side. The north side was an oversized garage, which stored our bikes and had a perpetually messy workbench at the end. A back door key hung to one side; you learned early how to raise the oversided garage door without an opener. The backside of the yard along our neighbors was also engulfed by an overgrown cotoneaster (I recently discovered a volunteer growing near a rose bush here in LO and moved it to another location where it’s thriving.) Adjacent to the cotoniaster was a patio made from recycled sidewalk pieces, lovingly motored together by dad.
Around the patio on three sides grew raspberries that dad tended. He had grown up with them, I think, and perhaps had initially transferred some plants from home. The Sears, our neighbors on the backside, had a large gravenstine apple tree that hung over the patio. The agreement was they could pick all the raspberries they wanted along the fence and we would collect apples on our side. During summer vacation time, It was not unusual for mom to simply put a metal mixing bowl in front of me at breakfast; no words need, I was to pick berries that morning.
But what a pleasure it was to have those berries! The majority went into jams and jellies, sometimes combined with strawberries. Some went into a syrup for ice cream. Others were reserved for cobbler or a fresh pie. I don’t think we ever froze any; they were too good fresh and we were greedy. Come late summer, mom would be busy making fresh applesauce from fallen Sears apples as well as an occaisional pie. My love of pie would inspire me to try my hand at pie-making while still in grade school, a love that continues to this day.
There was also a garden; for a while Chris grew vegetables, but dad often planted beans, corn and lettuce. Ben, his father had learned to garden alongside Italian “truck farmers” who took over two vacant city lots along Powell Blvd. as well as part of Tibbetts Street, which was unpaved.
The gnarly cherry tree, despite its typically wormy fruit, provided all sorts of childhood benefits. One particular sturdy branch served as the anchor for a rope swing. Dad later built an elaborate “platform” from which we swung. It was constructed of a pair of 2×6 boards in an A frame on both sides; cross members provided stability as well as rungs to climb to a level deck with enough room for two to stand, about five feet off the ground. I don’t know how any of us managed not to get injured, although once I caught the rope around one of the A frames and tipped the structure over when I jumped off.
Later, dad would utilize the platform as a support when he built a pre-fab outhouse in the backyard, destined for the property we owned on the Wind River in southwest Washington. How does one build an outhouse? Dad studied forest service versions and loosely copied. He bulilt the walls, floor, bench with a toilet seat, and roof so that he could haul them to the property in a borrowed trailer and assemble with screws over a hole he dug. Ironically, he preassembled the outhouse in our backyard and let it stand for a few days; he was proud, but the neighbors may have thought otherwise.
The tree also provided a space for a tree house, but without the supporting limbs. Dad improvised by nailing 2x4s together into two 4×4 vertical post on two sides and then attached 2x4s that wove through the upright limbs and made a diamond shape that held the floor. Initially I was able to attach my army pup tent to the floor, but later built a more formal room using dad’s leftover supply of aluminum printing plates.
Our neighborhood exemplified “neighbors.” You knew everyone and they knew you. Beside the Sears, Paul and Ruth Liniger lived on our south side; she once made donuts for all of the kids playing in the yard and I would take care of her cat while on vacations. The Kesters across the street had lived in their house the longest of anyone. The Knights lived on the other side and with whom we shared a driveway; Al Knight was ironically a newspaper production manager for Clark Press, a shopper newspaper. Al helped usher in digital typesetting at Clark. He brought home aluminum sheets that had been on the offset presses, which my dad used to clad the “club house” he built for Chris in the backyard. Later, the Carters moved in across the driveway.
All around us were families with kids of various ages on 19th between Rex and Knapp streets: Gillams, Ashtons, Sherwoods, Kennedys, Sullivans, Misetichs, Loschiavos, Buckmeiers, Stewarts, Wests, and Cresaps, the latter of which included Kelly and Dale who were friends for both me and Chris respectively.
For the most part, ourselves and our neighbors were lily white. It wasn’t until the 70s that Jose, a Cuban immigrant and his family, moved next door to the Cresaps. In seventh and eighth grades, black kids would be bussed to Llewellyn to meet integration ideals.
Early in our lives, Kelly and I would zoom back and forth between our houses on the sidewalk on our tricycles, long before the creation of plastic “big wheels.” Until you were of a “certain age,” you rode on the sidewalk, first on trikes, then on first bikes. Unless you were Donny: Donny rode and went wherever he pleased; it was not unusual to find him in our garage exploring. Mom had words with Donny’s self-righteous mother, then with Donny’s dad who listened to the issues and left saying he’d take care of it. Meanwhile, Donny would zoom out of his driveway into the street or peddle down the middle of the street oblivious to cars. You could talk to your neighbors, even if it was tough talk.
Those maple trees yielded vast pile of leaves that were fun to jump into or make into forts or whatever. The smell of those decaying leaves has stayed with me all these years, even without maple trees nearby. They stood listening and watching the neighborhood change without revealing any secrets.
A few blocks east of 19th street was Westmoreland Park, a long stretch of green bordered on the far side by Highway 99E/McLoughlin. “In 1935, the Portland City Planning Commission recommended development of recreational amenities for the nearby residents and ‘the improved appearance and traffic safety of McLoughlin Boulevard as a major traffic freeway entrance to the city.’ In January 1936, the City of Portland purchased the 45-acre parcel called Fairways Addition from Oregon Iron & Steel Co., a business owned by the Ladd Estate Co. A partnership between the City of Portland and the federal Works Progress Administration helped escalate the park’s construction. Viewed as an important opportunity to employ laborers during the rough economic times following the Great Depression, park construction focused on manual labor in order to employ the greatest number of people. The fly-casting pond, specifically, was hand excavated, and was one of the first features completed at the park.” The park was completed in 1939. (Source: “Westmoreland Park Historical Information,” Portland Parks and Recreation, City of Portland. Online at https://portlandoregon.gov/parks/63936). Along McLoughlin Blvd. to the east, giant trees, planted in 1936, now tower over the right-of-way on both sides, making a canopy over the highway.
Through the middle flowed Crystal Springs Creek, a tributary to Johnson Creek and on to the Willamette River. At the north end of the park the creek flowed into what was called the duck pond, once known as “a model yacht lagoon.” Along the creek’s path were a half dozen bridges and many trees. In grade school I owned several inflatable rafts in which I plied the mighty Crystal Springs and under all the bridges. Kelly and I also sailed his family’s aluminum canoe on the creek, narrowly (and foolishly!) fitting through a culvert beneath Bybee Street on one occasion.
The park featured a large playground with the necessary swings, teeter-totters and merry-go round. There was a wading pool in the summer, Bocce Ball AKA Lawn Bowling courts, several softball diamonds and Sckavone Field for triple-A baseball. When my grandparents, Ben and Myrtle Wolff, would come for a visit, I knew there was likely a leisurely walk to park; my grandfather’s gait was slow and there was a bit of a hitch in his step. He always wore baggy pants, especially blue jeans that were pulled up to his rib cage. He would take me down to the park to watch a softball game and buy me peanuts from Sally, who would drive a concessions truck into the park. I learned quickly to love Sally’s fruit-flavored snow-cones.
One Saturday while still in grade school, my friend Bill – who lived four blocks north on 19th – and I were rafting in the duck pond when some kids from school thought it would be fun to pelt us with rocks. What they didn’t know is that Bill and I came down to the park regularly to target practice with my Wrist Rocket sling shot, which we had brought along. Bill used several rocks that had landed inside the raft as return fire, with considerably more accuracy. The first shot hit a tree directly behind one of the perpetrators; we could see his surprised reaction. The second shot hit the same kid in the ankle, his jumping around cracked us up and halted the rock tossing.
At the park’s middle was a man-made square pond, known as the Casting Pond, used for fly casting, sailing model boats, Milk Carton races during Rose Festival and the occasional rubber raft. One winter’s evening, the Casting Pond had frozen over, seemingly solid enough to stand on. Kelly, our mutual friend Tom and I were exploring the ice when Tom slipped and fell through the ice. Fortunately, the water wasn’t more than three feet deep; the three of us ran to Kelly’s house where fortunately Kelly’s dad had built a roaring fire in their basement wood stove; Tom’s frozen pants thawed quickly.
I saw a number of events at the park: the aforementioned Rose Festival Milk Carton races in which each entrant’s boat had to be completely made out of glued-together milk cartons, with awards for style and for making it across the pond without disintegrating. I saw a 1970s Rose Festival Court in their Cadillac convertibles; I collected autographs. One Saturday, a band whose name I don’t remember, hooked up their amps and let loose; I could hear the music in our backyard.
One of Kelly’s brother’s friends Phillip used to harvest mosquito larva from the Casting Pond to feed his captive reptiles. He showed us his method: a rock was taped to the bottom of a fire cracker, then the cracker was wrapped with more tape up to the top. Holding the fire cracker a foot or two above the water, it was lit and immediately dropped into the water, exploding just beneath the surface, creating a small plume of water, like artillery. The larva would swim to the surface and Phillip would scoop them up in a small net. Of course, when I tried it, the fire cracker fuse burnt much quicker than expected and I felt the blast between my fingers. I was sure I was injured or skin shredded, but besides a short stinging sensation, I escaped unscathed.
It’s hard to fathom all the influences, both good and bad, that come from the grade school experience. Llewellyn was the neighborhood K-8 school, like all the Portland public elementary schools at the time.
Just before starting first grade, I can remember being coached on the the most direct route to school, by way of the safety patrol crossing at 16th and Bybee. I was supposed to go down 19th to Bybee and then to 16th, but after a while, Kelly and I walked up Knapp to Milwaukie and through the shopping district, later bypassing the safety patrol all together. When we were in 6th grade, we were allowed to ride our bikes to school, locked up to a large bike rack in the back of the school. Today, I can’t imagine my daughters walking 16 blocks to grade school as a six year old!
The current school building was built in 1928 during a decade of district growth; the first school on the site opened in 1905. The current building layout and design was one of many Classical Revival-styled schools repeated throughout the city. We had a dedicated cafeteria with its own kitchen, a gymnasium, auditorium, blacktop playground and two softball fields. Today, parents and kids at Llewellyn have a robust webpage and mission statement; I think our mission was to get through!
I didn’t attend kindergarten at Llewellyn; I was living in Eugene that year. But Kelly, Bill and I would go through the grades, sometimes together, sometimes apart. We were all together starting in second grade.
Thinking back on the parents of kids in my classes, the socio-economics were pretty equitable: professor, pharmacist, salesman, barber, phone repair person, auto parts manager, substitute teacher. The up-and-coming often moved out: a couple across the street moved when the husband, a commercial real estate agent, helped sell the Rhodes building, which became the Galleria.
Comparatively speaking, it was much cheaper to own a home. Economists say that in the 1960s, less than 25 percent of a household income went to pay the mortgage – and the vast majority of income came from one breadwinner. My parents bought the 7524 house for $9500, the down payment for which was helped by my grandparents. On a 4.5 percent VA loan, they were paying less than $75 a month on a 15-year loan. Dad probably grossed between $15,000 and $20,000 annually in the 1970s, based on some internet figures for college professors during that time period. (See Lending Tree site: https://studentloadhero.com/featured/historical-pay-study/)
The school was laid out with the primary grades along one side on the first floor, the middle grades largely on the other side of the building, and upper grades upstairs. Due to space issues, the district added a portable classroom – a triple wide – at the north end of the property; I was assigned to the portable in fifth and in eighth grades. Members of my eighth grade class were a bit more daring when the teacher left for a restroom break: shooting the fire extinguisher out the door was quite popular.
All of my teachers were women; at the time there was an issue with men teaching primary grades, this barrier of which dad broke through at Forest Hills Elementary by teaching third grade (always a trail blazer!) Of course the Llewellyn principals were men (authority!) and there were two upper grade male teachers.
The older students, beginning in sixth grade, were offered “jobs” outside of the classroom. These included assisting in the office with mimeographing and sorting; being trained as an AV assitant, which meant helping start 16 mm movies in classrooms where teachers couldn’t figure out how to loop the film; becoming a safety patrol person, either at crossings in the morning and noontime, or leading a line of kids to one of two crossings: 16th and Bybee or Milwaukie and 17th at Tolman; or, as I chose, working in the cafeteria. All of these jobs were earned by good classroom standings and could be revoked.
I chose cafeteria duty. Lunches were in two shifts: younger kids first, followed by older kids. Most kids bought a hot lunch, lining up along the hallway wall as they were excused from class. No doubt there were lower income families with subsidized meal plans, but those tickets were handed out elsewhere and looked no different. By sixth grade, I was already delivering newspapers and handling money, so I was able to take the job selling tickets. Other jobs included serving food or dragging full garbage cans to one end of the cafeteria for the janitor. We all did clean-up, which amounted to pushing remnants with large floor mops and mopping table tops and bench tops with smaller mops and an ammoniasolution that would kill both COVID and small mammals. Cafeteria duty came with a free lunch.
Before fifth grade, hot lunches were cooked in the cafeteria kitchen by “Cookie” and her staff, a tough group who took no prisoners among cafeteria duty students or anyone else. I looked forward to pizza and to chilli, the latter always came with a warm cinnamon roll. In fourth or fifth grade, the school district stopped lunch preparation in the grade schools, choosing to truck precooked lunches in warming trays that were prepared at the high school and served cool. Yuk!
With the trucked-in lunches came the advent of chocolate (flavored) milk. Also yuk! I think the district believed more kids would drink chocolate milk, so the majority of the half-pint cartons were chocolate. I often came in toward the back of the line when all the plain “white” milk was already gone. I was pissed! I’m not sure where the idea came from, but I proposed to our principal that I survey students to assess the real preference so that the white to chocolate balance might reflect preferences. My survey reflected a greater desire for plain milk than was clearly being delivered, but I don’t think the survey had any affect.
Recess had its own hazards, minimized by the lack of swingsets or teeter-totters, but there was a stout jungle jim built from pipes. The only other hazzard was from inhaling the unique “airs” coming from the south: the school was next to the Portland Memorial and Crematorium, the first built on the West Coast in 1905. The fumes were clearly “customers.”
I got along with most of my classmates. Family circumstances affected a few with more fringe or disruptive behavior; many had reputations or labels. Kelly and I were labeled “brains” I think because the work was easy and we put more effort into assignments, etc. Greg was a “jock” although we didn’t use that term. Later, I grew my hair long and got a lot of flak from classmates, but I was unphased.
Sadly, Billy was probably the most picked on. Looking back, he wanted attention and did so by telling tall tales, such as telling us he wrestled alligators. But his clothes weren’t the newest or cleanest and neither was his personal hygiene. He was more frequently beaten up after school. He stole from me what I think was a bike lock; the teacher found it in his coat pocket.
A high point of grade school was the week away at Outdoor School. In sixth grade, classrooms were assigned to a fall or spring camp time and separate from any other classes at the same school, but with three or four other Portland schools’ sixth grade classes. My class went to Camp Collins; in high school, I would volunteer as an Outdoor School camp counselor, coincidently at the same camp! A lot of kids never leave the city, let alone go camping. There is also an element of manners at meals, along with jingles that called out “bad” behavior such as elbows on the table or silverware that is propped up on the edge of a plate (a so-called “gang plank”). But it’s also the social experience of being in a cabin of kids your age that you have never met before, but with whom you share this unique 24 hour experience. It only lasts six days, but it’s intense, leaving many kids in tears at its conclusion. I can’t say I was so moved; I’d been camping and had traveled here and there, but there was a lot that was still a new experience.
But not everyone in the neighborhood attended Llewellyn Grade School. A number of families sent their children to the local Catholic School at St. Agatha. There was an antagonism between those in public school and those in uniform—the blue tops and salt-and-pepper cords or plaid skirts. Name-calling, dirt clod-throwing antagonism. But why? I didn’t know these kids, had nothing in common, which was perpetuated by a fear of the unknown. Only as a parent would I come to realize that school uniforms, among other things, were imposed to create equality and neutrality among fellow students, not a label.
On top of that, culturally among many in the United States there had long been a bigoted attitude toward Catholics, stemming in part from the backlash against Irish and Italian immigrants who were deemed undesirable — and largely Catholic, even those these immigrants, like many before and after, took to the American way and became successful. At the extreme end of prejudice was the Klu Klux Klan, which in the mid-20th century, sought a national profile and identified several groups—not just African Americans—as alien threats to family and nation: Catholics, Jews, immigrants, “new women,” bootleggers, criminals and—of course—black Americans. John F. Kennedy’s election seemed to calm some fears that a Catholic Pope would direct US federal policy.
Less extreme and more subtle—but still degrading—were the parents on 19th, who passed down a belief that their Catholic neighbors owed an allegiance to their local Catholic parish. In fact, as Concetta can attest from her experience on the East Coast, the private parochial schools provided a better education, drawing Catholic and Protestant — even Jewish — families. Portland was perhaps slower to realize this, but about the time of forced integration, i.e. bussing kids from North Portland to Llewellyn, private schools such as Montessori and Waldorf began showing up as an alternative to public schools, which unconsciously sanctioned parochial schools — even Protestant schools such Oregon Episcopal School — as a respectable alternative to under-funded public schools with forced integration.
Ironically, I would begin attending a Catholic parish in 2000, converting in 2009. The parish began a school in 2012, which has grown and will be enrolling through the 5th grade in the fall of 2022; the kids — many of whom do not come from Catholic families — look adorable in their uniforms!
There were plenty of kid hijinks and mayhem, as well as all out bullying in and out of school. In the latter category was Danny, who was a year or two older and always threatening. He even punched me in the nose in our driveway once; he must of imagined himself some kind of prize boxer. Was it karma that would come his way later on? After a short stint in the army he came home, but was banned by his parents. He lived in a large used car parked on the street. Ester Kester came out to pray for him on the lawn. He was later in a car accident that left him a paraplegic.
I can’t say that I was innocent of “kid stuff,” but it always seemed I was in tandem with a friend. Bill shot a BB gun from my bedroom window at a neighbor reroofing his house across the street; it was, after all, MY BB gun! Tom and I would throw a spool of thread over a wire crossing a street near the park, then tape an egg at windshield level to hang and be struck by an unspecting car. Tom’s influence would end when his mother remarried before he started high school, moving him to Milwaukie.
On the positive side, Tom and I would collect bottles in the park for refunds and then bike down to Oaks Park for an afternoon of rides. Any of us never thought twice about getting on a bike and riding from one end of the Sellwood-Moreland neighborhood to the other. I think bikes and later cars, because almost everyone got his or her license on the 16th birthday, were our generation’s means of independence. My daughters had no interest in a bike, and one to this day doesn’t have a driver’s license. A neighbor told me a few years ago that the internet was to our kids what bikes/cars were to us. Our kids can go anywhere and talk to anyone without leaving their bedroom.
All of my friends — Kelly, Bill and Tom — as well as others from school, would all have paper routes for several years before high school, riding our bikes (or pulling a wagon) around the neighborhood streets. (For more about paper routes, please see the “Newspapers” essay). We earned far more than the other kids who mowed lawns or babysat; surprisingly, no girls delivered papers. When my brand new 10-speed bike was stolen while in the grocery store, I was able to use my earnings to replace it within a month or two. I was devastated by the theft and my foolishness, but was more troubled by what my parents would say — I certainly wasn’t about to ask them for another bike.
Despite the potential risks of collecting subscription money at the end of the month, I never personally felt a risk, although Kelly was roughed up one snowy night. One of the other newspaper kids was attacked just houses away from his home and one street away from me, but was able to brandish his pocket knife and stab his assailant in the chest.
Tom would move to Milwaukie, but Kelly, Bill and I remained friends, even to this day. We looked for ways to hang out, to talk, to have fun.
Thanks to Don Cresap’s ingenuity, and as an alternative to the park, Bill, Kelly and I had a regulation-sized four square quad perfectly outlined in white on the asphalt in front of Kelly’s house. No one ever told us not to play in the street; we just knew to get out of the way of oncoming cars at the right time. We played after school and sometimes late into the evenings, not so much keeping score, but to have a space away from others to talk the talk of teenagers.
Later in high school, Bill, Kelly and I would take long evening walks up and down 19th, pondering the issues only a teenager can feel and face, trying to figure life out. One of us would call the other, saying “wanna take a walk?” Sometimes it was the three of us, other times just two.
Thanks to the boundaries around Westmoreland, it felt small town-ish. The shopping district along Milwaukie Avenue had two grocery stores, two “dime” stores, assorted specialty stores, banks, bars, the Moreland Theatre, a hardware store and more. My friends and I saw many first-run movies at the Moreland; we became old enough to go alone about the time we started earning money from our paper routes. Kelly and I bought donuts from Art’s Swiss Bakery on our way to school, becoming supreme barter for lunchtime foot swaps. I stopped into the Rexall Drugs to have a 35 cent ice cream sundae. We stood in line at the post office to buy stamps for our moms. The vacant lot next to the Masonic Lodge became a Christmas tree lot after Thanksgiving.
One afternoon at the newspaper station, Bill came down with me to talk with manager. The station at that time was only a few blocks from school along the north end of the shopping area on Milwaukie Avenue, conveniently across the street from the Dairy Queen. We were surprised to see a kid from school, who unfortunately had a hearing issue, try to lock us all in the station. When Bill and I went to the door to stop him, the kid turned and ran between two parked cars and into the busy street. I will never forget seeing the sudden impact of a car on his body and seeing it launch through the air and land some 20 feet away. He survived, later suing the driver. Bill and I would be subpoenaed and testify in court.
I lived at 7524 until leaving for college in the fall of 1978. Mom and Dad would continue living there until mom passed away in 1982; dad met Carol and moved out by 1985 when they got married. Dad kept the house a while longer, providing it to Bill and his wife Kathy when they returned from his Marines tour in Japan, from March 1985 until August 1986.
Not unlike the 40-plus years from Westmoreland’s founding to our time there, the neighborhood has changed in the 40 years since I moved away. The hardware store and Moreland Theatre are still there, but the Dairy Queen is gone. One of the grocery stores is gone, the other is a new brand. Drug stores and dime stores are gone and so are the gas stations. The Oregon Journal ceased publishing in 1982; no one delivers papers on bike anymore. The maple trees still stand as majestic, but the Hawthornes have been long gone, taking with them their memories of my family on 19th.
The “good ol’ days” are perhaps memories, once sharp, that have worn down to a soft patina. These are the days that others will look back on in their own minds. The homes along 19th are still loved and many have been updated or added on. Bikes still ply the sidewalks and families hike down to the park where kids swing, feed the ducks or lie in the grass and wonder what it will be like to be grown-up.