Memories From a Photograph

When I was growing up, I remember looking in my father's high school yearbook and finding several candid shots of him. He looked amazingly like I did at that age, except with shorter hair.

Tonight, when I stopped at a red light in town, I was reminded of him and his yearbook. This was because one of the candid shots showed him and a couple of friends standing on the corner of that very intersection, and the houses in the background showed plainly in the picture.

The same houses are still there and were recently renovated to look the same as they did when my father's picture was taken there in 1940. Indeed, very little about that part of town looks appreciably different from when my father was in high school. Along some sections of that street, the only clue that it is 2006 and not 1940 was the age of the cars driving down the street.

As I sat at the intersection waiting for the light to change, I looked intently at the spot where my sixteen year old father stood sixty-six years ago waiting for the school bus to take him home. As I remembered the photo in the yearbook, I could almost visualize him and his friends standing on that very spot.

Thoughts?