Home

Home may have a different meaning for different people. It could be your room in your parent's house, a dorm room while going to college, or your first home after getting married. For most people our first place is a rented apartment, or sometimes a small rented house, and many times it's not what we would consider an ideal "home".
I have been pretty lucky in that respect, after several rental apartments, homes, etc., for the first few years we were married, I built the first house we owned with my own hands. We had been married for seven years, and I was a new general contractor. After building several houses, I built one for myself, and it was the first home we actually owned. That was 40+ years ago.
We have now owned four different homes, two of which I built myself. We like to look at new houses, sometimes with the idea that we might actually be considering moving. We would like to have a little more room, and I still have hopes of having another three car garage. ("just in case you haven't guessed, I'm a garage guy")  In the last few days, we have had some family from out-of-town here, so we went looking at new houses with them a couple of different days. I couldn't help but notice when you walk through, and look around a new house, you always visualize how you would make use of the space, and make it your new home. I can almost see a Mustang in those three car garages. We could make it home, just let me prove it.

This is the last home I built myself.  It was in Northern Utah, and had a three car garage.

Night Out

Years ago, I used to really look forward to Friday and Saturday nights, out cruising the streets in my favorite performance car, seeing, and being seen, by other performance cars out cruising main. There was always the possibility of a street race or two. There was an excitement in the air, any life-long car guy felt it, as well as any new driver out cruising for the first time. When we hit the main drag in our muscle car, we could count on seeing the streets full of other hot cars. It seemed like every performance car in town was out and about. That's the way it used to be. Not any more. That part of the car enthusiast lifestyle is a long lost thing of the past.
Part of the reason for the change has slowly happened over the last 20 to 30 years. Young guys are no longer interested in performance cars. At least, not the way it used to be, especially compared to the way it was when I was young, and first started driving.
I can remember when I first noticed that things were different. About 15 years ago, I was out on the streets on a Friday night, after a long time of not going out, and it finally hit me. I could drive from one end of town to the other, and not see one other performance car on the streets. I remember thinking on my way home. "Well, it's finally happened. I'm the Last Street Racer".
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A night on the street, back in the summer of 2012.

Black and White

There was a time when everything was "black and white", not just our photographs, but the world around us, and the way people lived their lives. Maybe it's just the way we remember things from 60+ years ago, but I can't remember the world being as crazy as it is today.
There were serious issues back then, as history proves there has always been, but maybe the way people handled it was way more civil than it is today. I find it harder every day to watch the news on TV, or read about it on social media. I wonder if that isn't part of the problem. We are so "connected" to the world around us, and it seems almost all of the news we see is bad.
I come across this old photo from 1956 the other day, which is what started me thinking about the way things used to be. Of course, I was only six years old at the time, but the times were much simpler back then. The photo is of me, along with my cousins and my brother, on Christmas morning. I'm showing off my new cowboy six-shooters, the bad guys would be running for their lives. I just wish the holidays in 2018 could be as trouble free as they were in 1956.

Christmas 1956.