HAPPY 4TH OF JULY!

                          I'M A YANKEE DOODLE DOGGY

This is Winston, who I met in my childhood neighborhood a few years ago on the 4th of July.  He was quite a handsome fellow.  How I wish I'd had a basset hound when I was a child.  Such a great kid's dog.  


Whenever I think of the happiest celebrations in my life, I remember the July Fourths of my growing up years in the Arden Park area of Sacramento.  It's still a lovely old neighborhood, though quite a few ostentatious McMansions have spoiled the classic appearance of the community it once was.  McMansions and ranch-style homes don't mix, and it's a shame the area was allowed to be overbuilt in this way. 


The two bedroom, one bath "house that built me" recently sold for the second time, going for quite a bit less than it sold for several years ago at the pre-bursting of the housing bubble but still far more than the $11,000 my parents paid for it in 1955, the year we moved there.  It has now undergone a tasteful rejuvenation with the new owners.  I wonder what, if any, changes they made to the interior?  I'm glad I got to go home again and tour the house before it sold the second time.  I wish I had bought it and moved back to the house where I grew up.  It would have been great to take it back to its original look.  Oh, well.  I can go back there anytime I want in my memory, at least, and it will always be just as I left it.