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A Trip To The Hood About a month ago I had the chance to go back to the "hood", the place where I grew up. This would be in the West End of Louisville, otherwise called the Portland area. It had been a number of years since I had been down in that part of town. But I just wanted to see how much things had changed. Eli and I drove past the house on 3007 Duncan Street. My parents rented this house from my uncle Dennard. It was typical of most houses in that area. The yard was small. Each lot was only wide enough to build the house. Literally each house was separated by a three foot sidewalk. We did not have central heat, but a gas stove in the living room and a bedroom kept some of the house warm in the winter. Forget about air conditioning since these houses were built before anyone had such a luxury. In fact, Mom had to take our clothes to a laundry mat to wash. This she did on Monday and Thursday nights. One time the bath tub hot water faucet quit working and we went without hot water for a while. We lived there roughly ten years before moving out to the Pleasure Ridge Park area. The house on Duncan was about three houses from the railroad yard. We grew up hearing the banging and clanging of train cars jamming into each other and locomotives pulling them along. Since it was a dead end street it was great for playing street ball. The street was mostly gravel and one could spin their bike wheels to stir up some dust. A block away was J.B. Atkinson Elementary, where I attended from grades one to six. One of the meanest teachers mankind has ever known roamed those hallways. Her name was Mrs. Binus and she was my fifth grade teacher. Somehow I managed to learn my multiplication tables, geography, and a lot of other things in her class. Two blocks away were my grandparents. Their house was two stories high with a couple of bedrooms upstairs. My parents lived there until my brother was born. It was a dark house with little sunshine. My grandmother used to rock for hours in the living room. I never understood what my grandfather did, but he stayed busy most of the time. Across the street was the neighborhood park. We would go and play on the swings, slides, see-saw, and in the sand. I played a lot of basketball there. Later on I learned that my grandfather would sit in the front yard and watch me play basketball. I can still remember our phone number and some of my other teachers and friends. Ricky Hicks and I grew up together along with some others. It is interesting in how things change over time. Of course none of my childhood friends were to be seen on my trip down memory lane. They probably all moved off to other places to live. The house on Duncan Street is still there. Trains still bang into each other, but the street is now paved. J.B. Atkinson Elementary was torn down and a new building now rests on the place we used to play. My grandparents passed away over twenty five years ago and there is now an empty lot where the house used to stand. The park has gotten smaller over the years. I did not see any see-saws or swings and the grass needs mowing. As we drove around, I just thought of how things used to be and how much they had changed. There was something else that I noticed while driving around. The one thing that was still there was the grave yard. It was about three blocks away from where I grew up and covered a number of city blocks. It is guarded by a six foot concrete wall around the perimeter . The tombstones there come from a different time period. A time when every tombstone was a monument and stood at least three feet high. It has to be one of the oldest cemeteries in all of Louisville. I have no idea how many people are buried there and in fact I have never stepped on to the premises, but I remember walking by there. I could not help but think of Solomon's writing in Ecclesiastes as he spoke of the brevity of life. Things we take for granted and think of as being permanent are temporary. Even our memories change over time as we forget some things and remember some things that never occurred. The one thing that does remain constant is God's word. As Jesus said, "Heaven and earth will pass away, but My words will by no means pass away." (Mark 13.31). The "hood" has changed, I have changed, but God's word never changes. -- Dennis Tucker |