And no, the story is not done.

The firemen have gone; there is no fire left to fight.

I was walking near the ashen ruins. A car turned into the drive. The passenger side window rolled down. I walk over. The driver, a woman of a certain age that is quite a bit more than mine, leans over and says, “They burned down Grandpa’s house.”

Kind of takes you down.

But, we had a great conversation. I learned a history of my neighborhood, or should I say former neighborhood I never knew before. The woman’s family sold the house to Dick Hughes after her grandfather died. And she had cousins who lived in my house in the 1940’s. Of course, the house didn’t have running water then.

She just wished she'd have known. She would have loved to have gone in Grandpa's house one last time.