The Slice: How I spent my summer vacation

I’ve asked Slice readers multiple times over the years to recall the experience of going back to visit their childhood homes.

That inevitable tsunami of nostalgia has always intrigued me. But I had never actually made that trip myself. Until this month.

While visiting relatives in Michigan, four of us drove down to Dayton, Ohio, where I spent my K-6 elementary school years in a leafy suburb right next to Wright Patterson Air Force Base.

The real reason for the trip was to check out the National Museum of the Air Force. I knew it had totally changed since I last visited as a kid 50 years ago. But I also wanted to see 1243 Adams St.

The sprawling museum did not disappoint. It had all of the planes my late father flew in – the B-24, B-29, B-36 and B-52. And much, much more.

At the end of our first day at the museum, we drove over to my old neighborhood. It felt surreal, as I suspected it would.

Our house, built in 1957, looked just fine, which was a bit of a relief. I stood on the sidewalk and indicated where I had once built an impregnable snow fort.

The maple tree in the front yard had doubled in size. At least.

I looked across the street at where the Ellsworths used to live and recalled the time John Ellsworth wiped a football in dog droppings and threw it to my late brother.

My brother chased him into his house, pushing Mrs. Ellsworth aside as her scrawny son yelled “He’s going to kill me!” moments before he was apprehended by my not-scrawny brother and frontier justice was meted out.

Then we went to my elementary school (it’s now a middle school), where my sister-in-law suggested I stand for a picture at my old crossing-guard duty station.

A vocalizing cardinal seemed to ask where I had been.

On our second day at the aircraft museum, my wife and I went on a guided tour of the in-progress restoration of the celebrated B-17 bomber, the Memphis Belle.

We all introduced ourselves and told where we were from. I kept waiting for an opening, and finally just announced to our tour group, “A guy from Spokane was an original member of the crew.”

Sometimes home is where you wind up, not where you start.

Today’s Slice question: Can you name all your neighbors from when you were a kid?

Write The Slice at P .O. Box 2160, Spokane, WA 99210; call (509) 459-5470; email pault@spokesman.com. Tim Wink said someone observing him singing in the car would realize he doesn’t know the lyrics to any song that has come out since 1975.