My Hometown

I live in a pretty small town. According to my brother there are between 1,800 and 2,000 people here. He is good at remembering numbers and stuff like that. We have lived here our whole lives. Our mother has lived here since the mid 40's. The town has only been around since 1941. She has told me the history of it many times yet I can't remember it for sure - something about it being built during the war because of the shipyard workers in the area.

There are only about 7 streets. 2 of them are the main ones - Wavecrest and Seafoam. We lived on the former for the first 23 years of my life. My mom married the boy next door. Her mom moved to the farm with her brothers and my parents took over the apartment. When I was younger and we drove around town once we got to Seafoam I kind of saw it as the dark, scary side of town. Now we live here. I can't help thinking that I liked our old apartment better than this one.

Sure, it is a little bigger, not that any of the apartments here are that big. There are these type of units- single 2 floor, bachelor type which are really small, one floor 3 attached which we used to live in, 2 floor 4 attached which we currently reside in and some one floor 2 attached.

I loved the decor in our old apartment. Paneling and carpet in every room except the kitchen and bathroom. At first I had the bigger room as my bedroom and Mark had the small one. My parents slept on a hide-a-bed in the living room. Then my brother and I shared the big room and my parents took the small one. By the 1982 they built Mark a room in the basement and I got the small one and they took the big one. By 1985 they built me a bigger one in the basement. We had our own living room area down there too which was cool.

Most of the time my old apartment is in my dreams. I wonder why - maybe because that felt more like home than this one. I wish that we had money to fix up this place, it is in great need of it, especially the kitchen. It definitely needs a paint job downstairs. Such things are not in the budget though because of mom's many medical bills and meds and Buffy's meds.

This side of town is quieter because we are by the county road where the woods are. It's pretty looking out back and seeing them. Our town is close to the Parkway, a road that I try to avoid using. I remember how when I was a kid and we were coming home on that road from the malls , down the shore or elsewhere that once I saw the big sign for the Coachman Inn Hotel I was so happy that we were almost home even though we had a good time at those places. That hotel is no longer there. It's still partly a hotel but I can never remember which one.