With the nose high up in the air

Have you ever wandered the streets of your hometown with your nose up in the air? From time to time I like to do that and today was one of those times. I miss the old town.

I was born here and almost daily I see something gone. Just recently they tore down a small building that belonged to my school. It was called Lu because the entrance was on Lutherstreet. I had my English and Latin lessons there. We sat in the garden in summer and wondered what Cicero really tried to tell us. My brother called me late in the evening and yelled into the phone: "They are tearing down the Lu! Half of it is gone already!" Not that my town has ever had to offer much, it seems. Two big fires (1425 and 1782) left not many of the really old buildings and many more were replaced by what I can only call architectural sins (just my opinion), especially in the 70s, not a decade that I'd call famous for its sleek architecture. But if you look closer, you can still find charming bits around the town.

There is the private road with the cobblestones, there is the house with the old-fashioned glass part in the back or the one with the beautiful and wild garden that looks so lovely in summer. If you look a little higher, you see the old house on which side it still says in tall letters "Cheese storage", from the 1920s, I'd guess, or the one with the stained glass window showing a swan you never noticed before.
Look up there, there is still a pattern in the shingles on the roof and this house, seen from side, reminds you of old Ms. Vogel's house with the grey and white checkered pattern. She had chicken and loved children visiting her (which had probably nothing at all to do with the pattern). Where her chicken used to feed in the grass, is a parking lot now. Which one of the children walking there today to get to the half-pipe they build on the other side of the road knows that there was a little path and the "city creek" running along it?

When I walked or rather strolled home today, it was getting dark already, so I couldn't see clearly. I wonder if I had never seen it before or if I had forgotten it - the house with the bay window. There were the letters A and S and stone flowers, so beautiful even in the dark that I decided I need to come back in daylight to have a closer look. I bet there are many more of those little treasures out there, you just need the will and two open eyes to see them. I know they always make my day and put a little smile on my face, the old treasures like lovingly restored stucco on a house or the new ones like the stars in the windows of the kindergarten. The flower fighting the cold in the old cemetery that isn't used anymore, the little old lady waiting with a smile on her face while you take a picture of your school with your cell phone cam.
The angel you loved so much from when you were a small child ...


Am I nostalgic? Oh yes, I am. It's what gives me some of the strength for the modern times. And so I will walk by the cheese storage again and try to imagine what is like in those days .....