There's the doorbell, see who it is

Click image to enlarge

I remember the day my family moved into the house I bought in 1997. I actually remember the living room when it was empty, before any furniture was brought in and when the hardwood floors were still uncovered and shined like the banister that lined wooden steps that were also naked. As a matter of fact, all of the floors in the house were bare except for the green and yellow tiles in the kitchen and some sort of matching linoleum in the bathroom that covered those . If I only remembered the day when I bought it you might wonder why that is worth noting, but as I said, I remember the day my family first moved in... when my dad bought it. I am the second owner since the page shown here was current. On the fourth Saturday of this calendar I turned six years old and was too young to be thinking about starting a new school year as a first grader at Siebert Street Elementary School in just two months, but I wasn't too young to know that I was finally home. On the second Sunday shown here my mother married my new dad and before this month was over my brother and sister and I would begin making friends on the street I have come home to. Of all of the friends my parents made around here in the days that followed that day in 1958 only one is left on this street. An elderly woman who is in her eighties who still lives three doors down from me to this day. Before I came back in the year my mother passed away I had lived in different places around Columbus but nowhere did I ever feel the sense of really being home like I do in this old house. My work as a writer often documents where I have been and what I have been doing since I first walked into it, and one of my books, "Honey, I Promise" offers readers a very personal and candid look at what brought a poor and struggling family here in the first place. It is a story filled with abuse and heartbreak but it is a family history that I am very proud of. Another of my books, "Deputy in Disguise" talks about everything else. If you click on this picture you will notice that it is a calendar from one of the largest employers on the southside at the time, the Omar Bakery Company. Home of The Omar Man who delivered bread and pastries to the same door steps that surround this house. Omar, like so many other businesses around here is gone now, as are most of the people on my block who remember this era, but I'm still here and I hope you will spend some time perusing my blog sometime to share in some memories that may be familiar to you also. And when you can, please visit www.rickminerd.snappages.com/ or write to me at imjustrick@aol.com. As a writer I am no James Thurber, but he was a great influence on me and what I hope to accomplish someday, and believe it or not he once lived within walking distance of this old house. Perhaps the Omar Man delivered the bread for his table too.