A Porch with a View
From the lofty height of our back porch we had a breathtaking view of the alley behind, a cul-de-sac really, that I wrote about in a former post. It was more than a cul-de-sac. For us kids it was a close to home playground for games of tag, steal the flag, and stickball. From that porch my mom would call us in from play for dinner. Of course, at times she had to call louder for we had shifted out onto Leach Street.
So much time was spent there and on Leach Street that it is mostly a blur in my memory, but one time stands out in a rather odd way.
The Unsettling, Unusual, Unlike Any Other Day
I happened to be all alone, no one else around. It was getting on toward dusk, yet the light in the alley was still strong. Usually it darkened earlier due to the surrounding buildings cutting off the light. And the light appeared to be coming from out on Leach Street towards the east. So I left the cul-de-sac and walked out onto Leach.
It was the oddest sensation. I stood and looked up and down Leach. Everything felt backward. The leaves of the trees glowed from underneath their canopy, not via the sun from above and through.
And it wasn’t only the light, the orientation of everything seemed completely the reverse, like the sun was setting in the east instead of the west.
Since it occurred around the time of my accident I have always connected the two, as if some kind of weird premonition. And they are both connected somehow to the event that I will narrate with the next post.