Slight Detour: Saturday Slight

Endorphins and more.

Pogo sticks at City Park.

Murder in the alley.

George, the milkman, bringing milk in bottles.

Walking on new stadium turf.

A Sandpoint Bulldog greeting us from his deck.

Photo ops aplenty.

Twas a hyperbole Friday afternoon, but that's not a stretch.

Walking with longtime, treasured friends whose family roots in our mutual hometown date back to the early 1900s---it doesn't get any better!

My experience yesterday with sisters Chris and Judy turned out to be the epitome of Memory Lane.

And, oh, did these two friends get to hear my memories as we left their home on in the Dub's area, walked to Barlow Stadium at War Memorial Field, strolled through City Park, now known as Lakeview Park.

While strolling over the new turf surface of Barlow Stadium, we had pretty much reached the giddy stage---well, one of us anyway.

This area served as a great place for spontaneous photo ops. Chris and Judy were willing participants.

I kinda think we all may even have temporarily shed about 50 years, welcoming back the persona of our youth during the time spent in that site where Sandpoint memories in the millions have been created over several generations.

Moving on to the pathway above the Pend Oreille River, we met other peeps and their pups, also out enjoying THE MOST BEAUTIFUL of January days one could ever imagine in our MOST BEAUTIFUL and beloved hometown.

Our trip took us through South Sandpoint, including the Third Street Pier and then a stop in the middle of a residential intersection to meet a pleasant young man and his young, wiggly and beautiful Border Collie pup.

On our way back to Chris and Judy's duplex, we crossed Euclid at the same block where I began my life in Sandpoint---a little white house at 214 Euclid, right next to the alley where murder happened during our early, early childhood.

Our family left the house in 1950 and moved to the North Boyer farm next to the airport.

Chris was nice enough to snap a photo of me in front of the house. BTW: she's also the one who snapped my blog profile photo a "few" years ago.

As we walked the sidewalk toward our "old junior high" and turned west on Lake Street, Chris and Judy wouldn't have gotten a word in edgewise, even if they had tried.

Fortunately, these ladies are seasoned and patient listeners, so they heard about an older brother's broken collarbone, which I believe happened when he fell out of window from a two-story corner house.

They also heard how my mother and everyone else who moved to Sandpoint in the 1940s had lived in the stone house next door. Chris told me she thinks local financial consultant Tom Tillisch now owns the home.

Quick nostalgic factoids continually erupted from my masked mouth as we passed the Crockett house, the home next door where Lee and Harriett White and their twins Patsy and Carol lived, the house where Tom Bloxom grew up and the home on the corner where Linnea Karstad, one of my mother's friends, had a beauty parlor.

Soon, we had returned to Chris and Judy's home, overflowing with gratitude for this wonderful chance to visit along a portion of Sandpoint filled with Memory Lanes and to share observations on the strange and worrisome segment of history in which we now live.

It was a good day, indeed.

Thanks, Chris and Judy.