Starting Here

I'm back where this all started, in my car parked on the corner where my first Iowa home once sat. I've paid my respects at the cemetery, but that didn't seem the right place to write. My best memories don't live there, only the sad ones.

Instead I sit as close as possible to my starting points. My family moved into a house here, across from the Methodist Church, when I was three.

At 10, I ran my first timed mile from this corner, four laps around this block -- and four years before joining the track team at the high school, two blocks away. At 16, I wrote my first lines at home in a diary that continues to this day. At 17, I typed my first published article in the old house.

That house is long gone, as is the original church. But the memories live on, going with me no matter how far I roam from this starting point.

A boy of 14 among young men, posing at our high school building in 1958. I did my first training that spring on the field where we stood.

The school and field as they look today, both long abandoned.