almost time

it's about time to leave the hills of Breckenridge and move on-but many things of our youth affect us for life.Grandma's house- to the right, the Messo's, Italian family moved in, just an ordinary blue collar gang, and of course, that big old house where I first lived up on the third floor and don't remember-except the cute 4 year old girl down below , who I had a crush on.
Mrs. Messso and a ladies group went to Kennywood park one day and they have a mechanical gypsy  woman in a glass booth, who, for a quarter would spit out card with your  fortune. Her card came out saying something  bad would happen today. She had a son, about 14 and a greaser, who went swimming with bunch  of his "tough" buddies above the dam. Johnny could not swim and when mom came home from Kennywood, she was informed he was dead-he drowned,  She went nuts with grief and swore never use that gypsy lady again. They dragged for his body by throwing a long rope with tri-hooks and caught him by his swim trunks below the dam. A very sad experience.  But the saddest was that the American Legion bought all the houses,  destroyed them all and made more parking paces for the members- to go in and booze it up since private clubs were exempt from the State's alcohol serving times.  Everything I cherished went-the homes, gardens and flower beds. Gotta make room for more drinkers, altho my dad and mom were members of the American Legion  all of their lives, yet neither drank alcoholic drinks.  The Legion was for fishing shows and to get ice in the ice chest when we went up north to fish.
Side Note" if your ever around Pittsburgh, two MUST VISIT places are Kennywood Park and the Carnegie-Melon Museum. They have the largest Real collection of dinosaur bones of any place. It will blow you away.  And so will Kennywood, the wooden roller coaster capital of the world, spotlessly clean and at least 60 years old.More about Kennywood later.