Flash to the past!

11-10-09: After 34 years, I returned to the days of my youth, the youth that was pre-MI. Where Kim and I spend most of our early years, and Chris was just a baby.

8222 Colfax St., in a suburb of Philadelphia. Being here for a conference in downtown Philly, I took some time to go visit our former home. After finding the directions from my hotel on Google maps, it showed me how I could get there by public transit (wanted to get more "virtual space miles" for our trip to the moon!).

So after a 20 min. train ride, I got off the at the Holmesburg Station and looked for a taxi. Nada! Fortunately, I had written the directions down for this part of the trip so I could see if the taxi driver was going the right way. Now I used it to start walking, though I wasn't exactly sure how far it was! Well it turned out to be almost 3 miles there, and after asking for directions a couple of times (to make sure I was heading in the right direction for the next street), I arrived! None of it looked familiar till I actually got to Colfax St.

Below are some pictures of this little journey back in time. And check out the little surprise I ran into!

On my walk there, I saw Kim opened up a food market very close to our former home! Why hasn't she told us this yet? A little secret side income stream that Cor doesn't know about???
After 3 miles of walking, wondering when I'd get there, I finally saw the Colfax sign! This is the very corner that Kim and I would wait for our school bus to GPJA where we went to school for our first 5 grades.
Looking down the hill from the corner is where our former house is.
Walking down the sidewalk, getting close to the spot where I got beat up by Patrick. ;-)
There it is! It actually looks nicer than I remember it. Must've been fixed up.

Looking up the street from the house.
A picture of me just to show that I was really here! LOL!
On my way back, I saw this man working in his garage. I stopped to ask him if he knew who lived there, and we got to talking. His name is Frank Crocco, a former cement contractor, and he's lived here since 1958--52 years! He moved in when they were first built! I told him that we used to live here 34 years ago and he then remembered my parents and me! Pretty wild. We talked for awhile, told him what happened to us after we moved, and he told me who was still in the neighborhood and who had left. He remembered Patrick and his brothers across the street. Pretty neat!
After saying good bye to Mr. Crucco, I started back up the street and saw this man, Mr. Frank Esposito, coming out of his house with his dog. I stopped to pet the dog, and we got to talking. I told him what I was just visiting and that I used to live at 8222 and before I told him who I was, he said, "You're Ernie!" My mouth dropped open, I couldn't believe that he remembered my name! He couldn't figure out how he remembered my name, he just did. After we chatted for a bit, we parted ways and I started on my long walk back to the train station (though it seemed quicker this time since I knew where I was going now). What a blast to the past!