Show Where You Started By FLORENCE BITTNER Thomas Wolf said Can't Go Home because when you return to where you called home you have changed and the people have changed and places are never as you But returning is an interesting LAST WEEK B. and I went home back to where we started from in the early days of our life back to where he grew back to where his roots were B. is a city He grew up within sight of the Empire State Building and the Manhattan across the Jersey When his parents' bought the house he was born they were pioneers living out in the Today that sector is totally built up with homes and businesses and automobiles in unbroken IS smaller and closer together than I and all the trees have grown The empty lots where he played are all used for The school he thought was large The distances he thought were long Most of the people are His parents both sleep up on the hill where the Manhattan Skyline is seen to best The friends are all many of them married during world war II girls from various parts of the nation and have made their homes on distant As did WE DIDN'T our first but we c past and looked and our must have been some shock for a girl from San Juan I told him that was a considerable Our first apartment was in Sheer After the there were no places available to People rented They doubled It was a fortunate young couple who did not have to spend their first months as guests of a Anything for rent ONE DAY B. and I were apartment This consisted of driving up and down streets looking for signs in There weren't Then driving down Street in Union City we saw a woman put a For Rent sign in a We stopped went in and said we'll take it and then Union City is It was totally built up by the turn of the Many of the apartment buildings are five story cold water flats which means they were built before central before hot running before BEHIND THE cold water flat apartment was a house which was old when the apartment house was It had four ground Lovely view or wash lines and the backs of apartment The entrance was an alleyway which we could span with our outstretched The bathroom consisted of a closet with a and in the kitchen a sink and bathtub with a porcelain lid which doubled as a sideboard and The heat was provided by an ancient coal stove which had been converted to It came complete with cockroaches ands stray urchins who spoke the pungent language of the gutter and were born IT WAS quite a shock to a girl from San Juan Grandpa Bittner grieved about our living but I wasn't really very here we can only go 1 reassured From there we went to and last week we revisited The New England countryside 1 have never quite learned to It looks so much the way we see it in the pictures I always suspect it has been staged for my New England must be the loveliest wooded areas of our 1 say wooded because I reserve the right to be partial to some of our SPRING HAD not arrived in New There was still ice on the ponds in Vermont and they were just finishing the maple syrup The trees had not started to but even pre-spring in New England is I have a sister in in the heart of the Berkshire and if I had the view out of my living room window she my work would go Vho could do the laundry or scrub floors when you could be looking across a grassy meadow to where the begin dotted with white farm houses and church fading into series of wooded I'd be afraid to leave the window for fear of missing a visiting YOU CAN'T go home Everything is but has changed as much as I Because I have changed my perspective has Large places have become New places have You can't go home but you can And And |