Coming Home (Again)

Cenotaph, original town library, grade school...I have so many memories of each of these places. I pass the cenotaph in front of the old post-office (now empty) and can see my father, American Legion hat tilted to the side, surrounded by his fellow veterans, on a November 11th many years past. Across the street is St. Lambert Elementary, where I went for grade 6 (having been transferred from the local Catholic school, thinking no one would ever remember my name at the new school) and what was hands-down my best year of grade school ever! I wore my hair in pony tails, held by those elastics with the small plastic balls (what happened to those, by the way?), a honking large mood ring, shirts inspired by John Denver and while out in the yard discovered a natural talent for tether ball. And right across from the school property sits the original St. Lambert Library, now a daycare. Mrs. Dunkley was the children's librarian, and she was wonderful - calm, kind and genuinely interested. When I wasn't choosing books, which was such a treat, I was reliving the previous night's episode of Happy Days or The Six Million Dollar Man. Sometimes I managed to get a little work done, too...