Rambling. . .

We spent a little time in Boise's North End last weekend setting up our stage and roof for the Hyde Park Festival.  I don't visit that area very often any more but there was a time 20 some odd years ago that I called it home.  My memories are a little fuzzy but some of the things I remember are:

-Big cracks in the sidewalk
-The smell of the laundry mat a block away
-Hauling an old yellow couch up the rickety stairs of my apartment because I was too stubborn to wait for help
-Driving a blue Toyota Celica 5-speed
-Feeling isolated because I couldn't afford a telephone
-Feeling independent because I could afford the $175 rent
-Watching my sweet old neighbor, Fern, have a stroke in her garden and being the first one to get to her
-Walking shady streets in the fall while pondering the future

I'm guessing I lived in the North End in 1987-1988.  I started in a tiny little apartment with my sister when I came back from a bad experience in California and needed a safe place to land.  At some point we moved in with our cousin just a few blocks away.  I finally settled in with a steady job at Red Steer and found my little upstairs apartment on 13th Street allowing me my first real taste of independence.  I liked it.

We drove around for a few minutes after our set up the other day and looked at my old stomping grounds.  It made me a little nostalgic.  Not that I would want to go back to that place in my life but it's interesting to look back at who I was then and the decisions that I made as a 20 year old that shaped who I am today.  There are a few things I'd like to tell that girl if I could go back in time about choices and decisions from my perspective today but I guess it's for the best that I can't. . .