The Key West citizen., 1952-05-13
HAL
BOYLE
SAYS
BY HAL BOYLE

KANSAS CITY R-It is long
road back to childhood. II is hard
to find the way.
Coming back to the home of his
boyhood, a man finds it hard to
forgive the changes. He has a
vague resentment that things don't
stay just as he left them just
as he holds them in memory.
He misses the neighbors who
have died or moved away. Who
cut down that tree in the back
yard he climbed as a kid? The
patch of blue sky looks bare and
new. And the elm tree in the front
yard. How did 1t ever get that
tall?
Somehow he feels a stranger in
the old house, lonesome because
it has changed as much as he
has. He has lost some hair and
got a new false tooth. And the
house has beer shingled, papered,
and modernized with d new sink,
another bathroom and a fine gas
furnace.
/ always have this lost feeling
momentarily when / return TO visit
our family home here. 1t is old
enough to be getting hardening of
the rafters. But instead it is get
ting disgracefully younger and
younger looking as / get more and
more middle-aged. Why should a
man age and a house grow young?
What kind of a world is that?
The incest thing in our old home
right now is my 8-year-old niece.
Kathy, the prettiest cowboy in the
block. Kathy is at an age when
she is losing her belief in the East
er bunny but still has firm faith
in the angels.
Il prayed you would come back
and you did," she told me. Il
used to pray wher you were away
at the war or somewhere. and you
came back then, too"
Although Rathy is glad to see
me, the thing she really likes best
about my visits is that | sleep in
her bed and she gets to sleep with
her grandma, which is a great
privilege. We had a big family
reunion dinner the other evening
Everyone ate heartily, and after
we all went to bed the house be
gan to vibrate from the snoring
a Boyle family trait. Finally moth
er joined the chorus.
Little Kathy Immediately begar
to shake her.
Grandma, grandma, wake upn
she cried. "You sound just like :
lion.'
There is nothing like children tt
keep a house from growing old
and | guess it is Kathy who keep:
our house vital and young. She
has as her own room now the
room in which dad and mother
slept when they first moved there
with five children more than 81
years ago.
One morning / awoke early anc
went downstairs. The steps still
creaked betrayingly, just as they
had years before when any of the
boys tried to creep silently uI
them after coming home late.
Sitting alone in the silent Twins
room, a room full of old famil,
memories of quarrels and kind
ness, tears and warmth, had the
feeling of being a prisoner be
tween two worlds--the restles.
present and the lost. Interchangeable
past.
l walked to the big. oid-fashionec
front door and looked out. Up tho
street came two young boys. de
livering the Sunday newspapers
They looked like brothers, anc
they were jostling each other anc
laughing.
Thirty years ago my older broth.
er. Edward. and I had walked
through the dawn streets this same
way, laughing. jostling and argu
ing as we threw the morning pa
perS kerplunk! -- on the front
porches.
| stepped out on the porch and
picked UP our paper. The two boys
looked at me curiously, ther
walked on. / watched them 20
and II was as If ] stood on a little
platform in time watching my.
self and my brother live together
again 4 lost morning part Of our
lives.
Somehow II save me the thing
every one comes back to find. ard
when | went inside the door | felt
al home at last. and ut peace
with the past.
~ FEN