The lights are up at Alum Creek. I noticed this driving home from picking up my son from his Band Concert. One year they had placed the Christmas lights up so that they reflected off the water. I drove over the Cheshire bridge that year with the van and let the kids look at them. They were sure beautiful !
With all the rush of the Holidays, its nice to take a moment and enjoy something that provokes such a feeling of nostalgia, Like being a child again.
Sometimes it can provoke feelings of love and romance, sorta strange, like candlelight on a table in a dark at a intimate restaurant . Home when its quiet and a fire is roaring in a fireplace while the night is very dark and cold. Some kind of magical fantasy to escape to when everything else seems so hectic.
I urge everyone just take a moment this Holiday Season to hold the one you love just a little tighter, just to be lost within each other, just let the time slip away just for a few minutes and enjoy each other. Being together is the most important reason and the best present to give to yourself and others!
My dad usually tells stories of his childhood most of time while the kids and I are over visiting my parents house. My mom takes up doing her cross word puzzle during this yarn spinning but once in a while she will tell about the way Delaware, Ohio used to be. If you have ever lived in Ohio, chances are you are familiar with Rte 23. It almost cuts the state in half and it goes through the city of Delaware. "The Main Drag" is Sandusky Street and once on this street you can pick up 23 going North or South.
My mom grew up on a small farm just east of the city, in fact we all grew up on the same farm and it only took about fifteen minutes to get to town. The school district was Olentangy and it sat on a road that dumped out on 23 called Shanahan.
Why am I going on like this and what is the point? well, if you go a little ways North of Shanahan Road you come to a little manufactured home community on the right called "Worthington Arms." It is here that my children and I live.
I joked about how each street in here was named for a type of tree. My mom went on to tell me that the reason why was because it used to be a wooded lot when she was growing up. There is Walnut Blvd, Cypress, Oak, Maplewood and the one we live on called Dogwood Terrace, to name a few streets.
It is funny to me that not only are the streets named for trees but that the community itself is called "Worthington Arms" when it sits in Lewis Center in Delaware, Ohio. Now to be fair, "Lewis Center Arms" don't sound very enticing, but seeing that just a few "couple miles" South of here in Columbus, Ohio is a suburb called Worthington.
" Worthington Arms" was the first trailer park community to be built in Delaware and over the years has been improved upon. The houses were nice, I can remember my parents good friends who lived here. My dad played electric guitar in a band and every once in awhile they would play there because "Bob" played steel guitar with them. I bet that was a treat for the people then.
Bob and his wife Rose are both gone now and so is the home they shared. It is nothing to see moving vans come and go here. It has its share of troubles like most communities do, and like communities we stick together when troubles come up.
In this day and age we have to be on guard. We have meetings and I have to be honest, I haven't attended any of them since our arrival in 2007, but the last one I had an urge to go to see what is was about.
Curfew is 10:00 pm in here and by 10:30 everyone should be in their homes but many kids had been out running around in other people yards and such. People stealing car batteries and even an Elementary school bus having its window shot out with a BB Gun . Each person at the the meeting signed up to be a "Block Watch" Captain, including me. I felt really good about it. It can be a challenge being hard of hearing to stand tough, but since I had Military and Law Enforcement in my blood, it made me feel pretty proud. Its nice to get a "Thank You".
"Worthington Arms" has had a long history here in Delaware. I can't say for sure how long it will be here. One thing is for sure, it has made its mark , many people and their elder parents still live here, many in the same home. I do hope and pray it will continue to be a good place to live so that it truly can be said that "Worthington is safe in Delaware's Arms."
