Memory Lane

Today Mindi and I went over to Scottsdale to visit my parents. Rich has gone up to Denver to watch some training camp practices and go to Spencer's first game on Saturday night. It seems like I haven't been anywhere this summer, (that's because I haven't gone out of my house much). We have talked about it a lot that Mom and Dad would probably appreciate the company and I wanted to talk to them about my dilemma, surgery or not. When we left the house Minid took a watch that needs to be repaired so we ended up on Mesa Drive heading towards Scottsdale. As we went down the hill I said, "let's go by and see our first little house and see what it looks like now." So we turned west onto Jacaranda and WOW, it was going back in time about 33 years. I had been warned by some old friends that it is a ghetto now and they weren't that far off. When Mindi was a few months old my parents loaned us $2500 to put down on our first piece of real estate. We thought it was darling and because we were so poor we qualified for government help. Our house payment was $211 a month, so I went out and got a job because I was sure Rich wouldn't be able to afford that with a new baby and utilities. I remember we had a piggy back unit which was a heater, air conditioner and a swamp cooler. When it was super humid I would run the air conditioner, but then wouldn't run my dryer, I would just hang the clothes out on the line because we couldn't afford both. It's funny how when you get old and mature, you start thinking about how your life has changed through the years and things that seemed so hard at the time are just a faded memory. Mindi says she's gonig to take her kids over to where she came from and show them what happens when you don't take care of stuff. I have such good memories of living there. I had my other three kids while we were living in that little house on Jacaranda. The challenges I had there were so small compared to some of the trials we have gone through lately. I still have some very dear friends that lived on that street. One of my most spiritual experiences happened at 314 E. Jacaranda. It's been a long time since I've lived there, but it was fun taking a stroll down memory lane.