It comes to me as if in a dream. I must have been in my  early teens when this photograph was taken. There were many floods when I was growing up. Dad always used to go out in the boat and take milk and bread to his customers (he was a grocer). There's me and my dad in the rear of the boat and my Uncle Alphonse in front in the dark sweater. This was a pretty big flood. About 48 feet would put water into the house. Flood stage was 39 feet and pool stage was 16. Believe it or not, there were about 12 feet of basement above the ground on this old house.
This old house, how I loved it! Dad carried me into it for the first time when I was 8, because I was having an asthma attack. Just about the time of this picture, I got to have the room on the right side over the front porch roof. Right outside my room was the stairway to the attic, which contained the garret that looked down over the street.

I lived here until I graduated from college in 1960. I moved to Cleveland, and except for a brief time in 1963, I never came back except for a visit. It's gone now; a victim of urban change.