I am the baby of the family. The youngest of two children. I trail my brother by 3 years and 11 months allowing only enough space between us so as to not be sent home for annoying him. We are free to roam about the neighborhood as long as we don’t cross 5th street – the only road for miles with a double yellow line. But that’s fine – the candy shop is on this side of 5th anyway. The grocery store, elementary school and its playground are all in bounds.

Our neighborhood was made up predominantly of boys, as far as children go, or maybe I just didn’t notice the girls. We played baseball in the empty lot next to our house until that lot sold and our new neighbors built one of those newfangled modular homes – blocking the view from our dining room window. But holy moly the inside of that house was nice. Modular homes didn’t seem that bad.

I am a terrible athlete. Slow, uncoordinated, easily hurt but I want so very much to be not terrible. To be of equal value to the other boys when it comes time to pick teams.

The rest of our days are filled with games of cops and robbers, and of course, karate. No formal training – just a lot of martial arts movies. My brother successfully flips me after coming home from seeing Karate Kid in the theater. Other than almost cracking my head open on the sidewalk I think it is really well done. Mom disagrees.

Our basement, while only maybe 600 square feet has two brick columns in the middle making it an excellent roller blade course, music courtesy of my cassette boombox – New Kids on the Block and MC Hammer.

The summers are mild. The largest of the Great Lakes acts as an air conditioner – always cold. The winters are harsh but great for carving tunnels into the snow for a complete ‘underground’ system – until our bounding happy black lab frolics through and crushes our creations.

If Wisconsin were your left hand (put your fingers together like you are in a mitten silly), I grew up at the tip of your little finger, in Superior. My parents owned a three bedroom house in East End. Not as well off as the Central Park area but in much better shape than the West End. There are more tennis courts than one might expect in a city this size and there is a sad lack of trees. The houses are at least 30 feet apart, the ditches are deep and every block has an alley. Whether its the large lots houses sit on here, the sad lack of trees in residential areas or the presence of the largest fresh water lake in the world – the sky is huge. The horizon an infinite distance away.

Unlike where I live now, which is one of the fastest growing counties in the country, the population back home has been steadily declining since its peak of 40,000 in 1910. It now it hovers at 26,000. Buildings sit vacant – like jack-o-lanterns without lights. About 95% of residents are as white as the fresh snowfalls that make up a large part of the below-freezing winters.

While there are more bars in town than churches, a large portion of the city is Catholic followed by a hearty Lutheran representation.

When I am very young we attend a Lutheran church regularly. The pastor grows tired of pausing his sermon to ask the Sunday school teacher to retrieve me from my parents’ arms. I am turning around in the pew and making piggy noises again. That Sunday school teacher is captivating. A bright smile, happy eyes and dark skin. What is her hair made out of anyway? Her name isn’t Carol, or Linda or Debra – no, its something much sweeter and lyrical. The syllables sound new and they quickly fade from lack of like neurons to attach to. She smells like coco butter. Not a deterrent for getting kicked out of the pew.