I need a change of scenery. I take the tracks to the center of town with the dogs to pick up my car at the garage where I left it to be fixed. A frosty morning, a beauty. This magnificent centuries old barn stands at the corner where the railroad tracks meet the first street intersection we cross. Taking pictures when the dogs are leashed, (as they must be crossing streets), is a challenge – Charlie doesn't want to stand still. But I'm pleased with the result.

Next, we hear the warning of a morning train – I leash them and step into the brush to watch the train chug by us. Up ahead, unleashed, Charlie hears some dogs barking in a fenced yard and he won't come back, so now we're in a neighborhood, I have to leash them, and walk in the direction of the road, which I sort of recognize, it's a hill, it must be Peckham Hill, where my best friend, Julie, lived growing up. The hill is smaller; their cape house, where five children were raised, has shrunk. The last time I drove by, both Judge Meyer and Mrs. Meyer were alive and well and working in the yard, so I stopped to say hello. There's the lit Christmas tree in the front window, the place it always stood, and there's the window to the tiny dining room where Mrs. Meyer made me eat so many foods I didn't like. There's the basketball hoop in the driveway - the one you couldn't shoot a ball into on Sunday mornings. 

We follow the road for awhile until we return to the tracks, and I pass more homes from childhood, old houses and driveways of friends long gone - and wish I had the whole day to walk this way, with the dogs on the leash in the cold before Christmas, all these old country roads I've grown up on almost sixty years.

We reach the center of town, cut across a horse farm, cross the road that leads up to Pine Hill Cemetery where my parents ashes are buried, and reach Rose's garage, my car, the end of our walk. I must make a plan for a whole day of walking around before Christmas.

All text and photos copyright Kelly DuMar 2017