View From Here

With my recent trip to Massachusetts to visit a long ago home of mine, I have continued to think of the people I knew there back in the 1950’s. Yes, these were early days for me, ages 11 through 17, formative years. Perhaps that is why I think back on them so often these days. Not one of the homes in our old neighborhood was owned by a family I knew back then. Searching internet records, one fellow died in 1972. Another died at 65 in 1987, his wife dying in 2005 at the age of 86. Her kids were playmates of mine, and both live in Florida now. I have searched for a longtime buddy of mine (Buddy Wynn) with no luck at all. Cannot even find his parents obits or information on his surviving brothers. Same with other neighbors. Well, leaving this behind for 63 years makes searches difficult today. I guess I will just have to live without knowing anything about these folks. This process, however, kindles an interest in history, both of people and place. Pittsfield, Massachusetts has a lo...

No matter what happens, the beat of life continues. The pulse. The action. The people keep moving. Business continues. Schools hold classes. Food is grown and sold, distributed. People eat the food. Clothes are made and worn. Other necessities of life are needed, and that demand is supplied. In basic ways, no matter the circumstances, life continues. Look upon graphic records of your family tree. Who was born where and when, who they married, the children brought into the world, who they each married, had kids with and so on. Life goes on. In war. In peace. In blooming economies and dead or dying ones. That fact of existence of others is the core point. They live and thus need. The business of living builds economies, small perhaps, but interlacing with others to become national economic systems. Then international trading happens, and soon the global economy becomes apparent. Whether or not we pay attention to these things, existence of one begets existence of another, begets need...

Rocky died July 23 rd , four months ago today. His 79 th birthday would have been November 28 th . His absence for this holiday and birthday will be the first in the 23 years we were together. Powerful to know this and feel it. Intellectually I am fine. Emotionally, I don’t know. Grieving is a slow and ponderous process never quite done. This is my first up close and personal grieving. Many friends have told me I would feel many different things throughout the process. Each person’s journey is different. I agree with that assessment. I feel prepared for that journey. But the living of it will prove the reality. I await surprises. This entire year has been a slow goodbye to Rocky. Along the way my mind took respite in memories over the past 80 years. One of those was living in New England for 6 years during my formative years. My daughter Liz and great friend Pam accompanied me on a recent trip to the Berkshire Hills of western Massachusetts. Facing the old but treasured life exper...

Tuesday, November 14 th was our last day on the road before reaching home. We started from Youngstown, Ohio at 8:10 am, and arrived in West Chicago at 2:47 pm. Kindly recall that we regained the time zone hour we lost on the way east. This was a good day for travel because the route was easy, well known, flat and mostly straight. Traffic was variable with heavy truck traffic throughout. Speeds were 75 plus. The challenge was maneuvering around crazy drivers in cars around the big trucks. The trucks were not the problem; the auto drivers were. Well, one is professional at the task, and the others are not. Enough said. Having said that, the trip was boring that day. Landscapes were typically flatland prairie. Oh, a little hilly between Youngstown and Cleveland, but soon thereafter it is low country and generally flat farmland. Much like Illinois, the drivetime was humdrum and gave us time to think over our travels. The experience was very good. Here are some overall impressions: ...

We left Pittsfield at 8 am on Monday November 13th. The Berkshire Hills were alive, sunny, mostly bare but with scintillating surprises of color hanging on. The ups and downs were thrilling. The roads were two-laned and very curvy. Green grass and growth came right up to the edge of the pavement. Almost everywhere this was true. Mother Nature truly delighted in every sense and almost every where. Pittsfield is a diverse city of 44,000. It sits in a bowl made by many rugged hills, covered in hardwood trees. In spring they are a riot of green, faded lime green, to middle and then darker tones. In summer these leaves are dark green and billowy. Fluffy treescapes are everywhere. Nary a straight road or flat one either. Decidedly not the Midwest. The woods are colorful, too. In this fading season of fall, the colors are subtle but very beautiful. We chose to start for home by traveling through the southeastern New York mountains. Also rugged, these are more so than the Berkshires. The...

Today is the second full day in Pittsfield. Yesterday, we saw Mt Greylock (highest peak in Massachusetts at 3491 feet), visited my old house and talked with the owner. He told me all the names I knew at the surrounding homes were all different now. No surprise there, but the homes were much the same. They just seemed smaller; don’t you know! New homes in the area completed what had been started when I last lived here. A great new neighborhood extension. Visited Lake Onota, which is nearby, Hillcrest Hospital which is where I lost my tonsils but is better known for the mansion it once was high above Lake Onota and the luxury homes on Tor Court. Out west of the city toward the state forest, were the new community college, and homes of old family friends. Then we traipsed to other familiar haunts. Today we visited Stockbridge, Norman Rockwell’s Museum, Tanglewood and Lenox, MA. Stockbridge is the home of Norman Rockwell and his museum. It is also home of one of the most iconic colonial Ne...

The first full day in Pittsfield. Boy did we use it. After a sumptuous breakfast at the hotel, we ventured out, visited the old high school, junior high, elementary school, and then tried to figure out how to talk to someone with the church. Physically sitting beside it, we learned it had merged with another UCC/Congregational church down the street a block or two. That means my historic old church was now used as a recreational facility and not a church. Shocked, I wondered what they did with the prized organ. Nothing is my bet. This church was my introduction to all choral music and appreciation for organ and instrumental music of all sorts. As well as that experience was, this church was the ground stone of my religious beliefs. As we traveled other city byways, I found myself driving north toward Williamstown and North Adams. Williamstown you probably know is the home of Williams College, and also the Matthew Perry family. [Strange footnote on this, my brother’s best friend and bes...

Day two opened to a beautiful fall day in Erie, PA. We drove to and through Buffalo, NY about 80 minutes later and made our way to the bypass that would lead us to the Massachusetts Turnpike. Along the way we again noted the changing landscape. We were often in full woods with some remaining fall colors. The land rose and fell a lot, sometimes precipitously by prairie standards. Green, lush and interesting, very much not agricultural unless you count vineyards in the aggie mix. New York state is beautiful. I suspect most people think New York is all about the metro area of the Big Apple. But the remainder of the state (ninety five percent of it!) is as pretty as England if not more so. Hilly, large green meadowlands and cropland too, but always with woods nearby. Hills the proportions of mountains (not California caliber, of course) were everywhere. The topography was quite diverse.  We often mentioned what winter driving would be like on such terrain, and I remember that well. Tre...

Day one took us out of Illinois, through Indiana, and all of Ohio. We spent the first night at Erie, Pennsylvania.   Getting there, however is part of the story. The we referred is me (George Safford), Liz Drozdik (my daughter), and Pam Kramer, my good friend and neighbor. The ladies agreed to come on this trip with me provided we traveled in another car, not mine which is 18 years old, has problems, and over ninety-five thousand miles on the odometer. So, I said yes, and Liz provided a two-year-old SUV with all the trimmings including four-wheel drive.   With that we should be good for any weather possible. We started on November 9 th at five am. Made it to Indiana before six am. We stopped for breakfast/lunch at 10:30 somewhere in Ohio. Dinner was in Erie, PA. The Illinois prairie landscape remained with us to just west of Cleveland. Hills appeared along with their woods. Undulating topography boosted the southern shores of Lake Erie. Woods were everywhere and very di...

Yes, getting ready to travel to western Massachusetts. We start out this Thursday. Aiming for Pittsfield which is the seat of Berkshire County, home of the Berkshire hills. The county is the entire western end of the state and borders Vermont on the north, New York on the west, and Connecticut to the south. I lived there from 1954 to 1960. Moved in at 11 years of age and moved out at 17. Spent my 18 th year in Syracuse, New York. While there I graduated high school and prepped for college in the fall of 1961. I chose Knox College in Galesburg, Illinois, and commuted for summer and Christmas vacation every year for four years. That meant driving or traveling from Illinois through Indiana, Ohio and New York. The trip from Syracuse to Pittsfield was about 220 miles and a mere extension of the Illinois to New York route. Back again to campus. And because my parents continued to live in New York and for a short time, Connecticut, I drove the route many times. Back and forth. A lot of i...

I write this blog to clear my mind of thoughts pertaining to life and its happenings. It’s a dump of feelings as well as thoughts. It is a reflection - my reflection - on why some things matter and others don’t. I am not egotistical enough to think your life revolves around me or my thinking. I really started this blog to unburden myself so I could focus on things that do matter. This has allowed me to organize a local newspaper and act as its managing editor. It gave our group an eight year run of covering our community’s life. It was exciting and fulfilling. We worked hard not to be controversial, just factual. I’m sure we missed that a few times, but not intentionally. The only reason we closed the paper was financial pressure. The four of us simply could not continue to operate the paper from our own pockets, and advertising revenue was not enough to cover the bills. Of course, this was during the era of social media expansion which is mainly free and used extensively for marketi...

Prices of homes have risen much in recent decades. I know, of course home prices would have risen over the last 50 years, but still, it is shocking to learn just how much. For example, my daughter showed me how to find current pricing on homes we once lived in. Current property taxes are also available by this method. So, let me just share these findings: 1.        The Altadena, California home I was born into, is now worth just under $1.6 million dollars. Many years after moving from that home, the owners added a second story so now that house is double the square footage of the original. Still, $1.6 million? I’m certain we sold it for less than $15,000 in 1953, probably more like $12,000. That property value also demonstrates how pricey California has become in recent years. Astronomical home prices. 2.        Glendora, CA was our next home. We built it in 1952 and moved into in 1953. It was probably worth about $14,000...