Childhood Haunts, Lexington, and Home Again

We pulled out of the Stone House on Friday morning, two weeks after our arrival. It was a whirlwind of a visit.

 

Heading off on blue highways, we drove through the hills, through Carthage, around the south side of Watertown, through Adams, and across Route 104 to Rochester. We drove through Durand Eastman Park, where I did most of my practice driving in Driver's Ed when I was 17. I could feel the power of learning that it is better to accelerate slightly on curves rather than braking on them.

We cruised Rock Beach Road, into White City, past Tone Terrace here I lived until I was in 7th grade.
In the summers, my Gage cousins, Walt, Rich, and Mike often came with Aunt Dorthea to spend a day at the lake with me, Marty, Pat, Kathy and our mom. We could walk down Tone Terrace, which was our post office address but was only a foot path . . . no cars allowed . . . cut through some yards, and be on the Lake Ontario shore in minutes.

It was not an official beach. It was our beach. We jumped off water-logged tree trunks, dug in the sand, and jumped the waves.

Lake Ontario is very high water this year again. I suspect our beach was not there any more. But a little farther along, I drove down Bateau Terrace to a city park on a piece of land that used to belong to my parents. Looking down the grassy slope to the beach, it looked a lot like what I remember of our beach a few block east.

 

 

Best of all, there were kids jumping the waves and playing with water-logged giant chunks of wood. Moms were watching and letting them take all those thrilling risks. Sweet!

We drove past the house I lived in while in high school and it looks great.

We crossed passed the Seneca Park Zoo (which was pretty much in our back yard), the Genesee River, and Kodak, to the cemetery to check out the family area and see if I needed to have the stone cleaned.

The day ended with a gorgeous drive through the hills and valleys of New York into Pennsylvania for the night, and a drive up Pickle Hill to the house we built in 1973.


Saturday we arrived in Lexington for an afternoon and evening with Meg and Steve.

 

Eleven+ hours after we left them in the morning, we were home in Gainesville. The amazing good news at home was that just about two weeks after leaving, we returned to a renovation project that is 90% complete. Bravo Robert Battaglia and Graetz Renovation!

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AFTER