By the time high school came around the house had been updated: new siding did away with the outdated colors. The neighborhood was still the same - people came and went, but a few stalwarts remained. The family across the street moved to a better part of town, and I think my Mom missed them. They were the sort of people who went to Minneapolis a couple times a year: cultured folk. He worked for a bank downtown. The son had a difficult time - when we hung out, we called ourselves the Ortho Brothers, named after the poison in the garage; I thought this was cool and dangerous until he walked into the garage of a house on the other side of the block and produced a piece of jagged metal and scraped a line in the trunk of a stranger’s car for no reason. This horrified me and I ran home and was never an Ortho Brother again.

His sister was willowy and cultured and played the cello and was part of the group that went to Rome in our Senior year.

They were all off and gone and busy with their own adult plots when I took this picture, shortly before my dad sold the house.