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This is the place I revisit in my dreams over and over, the place I think of as home.

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We lived above what was then a linoleum store on the corner of Washington and Broadway, Minneapolis, Minnesota. The black door on the right was a hideous mint green with the large word,

painted in black and white next to it. The door opened to a long, narrow staircase that ended with another door that required a key to open. My room was those two windows you see above the black door.

I was fourteen, almost fifteen, in 1961 when my mother married my stepfather and we moved here to live with him as caretakers of the rooming house on the second and third floors. It was a way to save on living expenses while they put everything into my mother’s small diner a few blocks up Washington. [I'd show you Dotty's Diner, but there's barely anything there any more.]

But the old rooming house is still standing–a miracle. I wonder if people still live there. If you pan around this image, you will see that there’s not much left of the neighborhood. I-94 has since mowed down the businesses that once made this a fascinating place for an imaginative teenager to live. Mickey’s Diner was kitty-corner from us, a country-western bar next-door throbbed tunes and parking-lot arguments at night where the liquor store is now, more bars dotted Broadway where I walked to school, and a nearby movie theater provided escape. Washington and Broadway, now just a stoplight to thousands of cars on their way to and from the freeway, once bustled with actual people. I loved to watch them from my window perch, imagining stories about their lives.

I wanted to be an artist so I could paint this corner. I never did, but I memorized it so well I can still see the heat shimmering off summer sidewalks, still hear the winter chink, chink, chink of chains on tires. I almost wish I hadn’t looked up the old address. My memories are so much better.