This Old House

Last weekend my friends and I drove around St. Cloud looking at houses where we used to live. One house looked the same but was situated next to the Islamic Center instead of a Baptist Church. Another house looked terrible - ugly and in need of repair. This a picture of our third house. You can see that it is being repaired. Our apartment was on the upper level and on the far left. We walked around the house and pointed out bedroom windows, kitchen windows, and living room windows. The house has a very large sloping lawn and across the road is Pleasant Lake. We had a lot of fun living out in the country. This is the house where I learned how to make chili. I remember asking how much chili powder to put in and was told, "One can." One can makes GOOD chili and I can't think how many batches of chili I've made since living there. This is the house where I learned how to make Rosettes-now a Christmas tradition. This is the house where we had a dinosaur bone suspended from the ceiling (two cow femurs put end to end with a strip of leather covering the glued ends). This is the house with very attractive end tables (beer cases covered with cloth). This is the house with Boomer - a large-headed, lethargic, alcoholic St. Bernard who greeted all cars that drove into the yard. This is the house where we had a 18 month old neighbor boy whose first name was Harley and middle name was Davidson. This is the house where we had another neighbor nicknamed "Sinus Queen." Whatever problems we had, she had it worse. This is the house where we had to work on Thanksgiving and ate stewed tomatoes for our Thanksgiving meal. Good times. Good times.