From two to seven I lived on south 79th street in Milwaukee Wisconsin. I am six in this photo.


My father was a pastor and we lived in a parsonage that was next to the grade school that I attended. I had a dog that was named Yahnah (in Enga – a New Guinean Dialect (I was born in New Guinea) – the word Yahnah literally means dog). My brother Andy and I would play endlessly on the monkey bars you see behind me. The neighborhood kids would call him Tarzan and they would call me Cheetah, this is the first time I can recall anyone calling me monkey. I went back to visit when I was in my early twenties and my father got a good shot of my physical reminiscing.



I’ve been back twice since then and I am far less limber. On the first occasion Bob and I found ourselves there at the end of a night of bars, the last one being an old tiki bar that had converted itself into a Nascar hang out, but still sported finely carved loa. Oddly enough I recognized a few landmarks so we went by my old house and watered the nearby trees. On the second occasion I found that the block had been leveled and a new high school had been built to replace my childhood haunt. The house, the playground, the old school, etc. are all resting compactly in a landfill somewhere with gulls from Lake Michigan circling overhead.