Being Neighborly

Down the street from me lives a woman who is 95 years old and living once again in the house she was born in. It's a fun story in and of itself as she (I'll call her V) is living with her 85 year old boyfriend (I'll call him D), who actually owns the house now. I was thinking that it would be really interesting to interview her to talk about what it was like growing up in Webster Groves. After all, she probably knew the Morton family who built my house. They lived here until 1938. I understand my neighbor's mind is very sharp, even if her body is failing her. And she loves to talk!

I was trying to figure out how to go about seeing if she would mind answering some questions for me. Well, yesterday while walking the dog I saw the boyfriend (tee, hee!) talking to his next door neighbor, whom I do know. Always one to try to answer when opportunity is knocking, I hurried up my friend's driveway to introduce myself. As I explained why I was interested in speaking with V, D quickly expressed that V would love to talk to me. She loves discussing old times. As she feels best in the afternoons, we agreed that I would just come over one day after Thanksgiving around 1:00. After D went back to working in his yard, my friend said, "You're going to write about this, aren't you?" It ends up that she knows a lot about the neighborhood as well, and she had some suggestions about other elderly people that I should interview before it's too late.

So I may be on to my next book idea. We'll see how this first interview goes.

Picture Perfect?

My dad had a lot of photographs from his time in the Army Air Corps. They are now all scanned into my computer - quite the time consuming task. Because they were taken and processed 65 or more years ago, without benefit of a photo lab, they are not in the best condition. So I fired up Photoshop and began the laborious process of photo restoration. Some of them need the services of a Beverly Hills plastic surgeon to give them a face lift, but I am doing the best I can with my modest knowledge of the software. As I study the photos, I wonder about the barely men with their smiles mugging for the camera. What was it like to be separated from their families, literally dropped into a world filled with poisonous snakes, blistering heat or never-ending monsoons, with malaria running rampant? Unlike today's soldiers, they had very little ability to communicate with loved ones back home. My dad and I talked quite a bit about his years of service. Unlike a lot of men of his generation, he didn't seem to mind talking about his experiences. Unfortunately, I did not take the opportunity to label the back of all the the photos stored haphazardly in an old cigar box all these years. So some of the places and subjects in the pictures will remain a secret. But I do know which ones are of him, and after all that's who the book I am writing is about.