a scant century of weirdness

On June 22, 1925, my father was born in Lansing, MI. Back then I presume he and his mother stayed in the hospital for at least a week. Remember that, it will come up later. His father, the Rev. Howard Pilcher, had taken what I think was his first job after seminary, supporting youth ministry at a Baptist church there in the Michigan capitol.

In 1989 my father retired in May, shortly before he turned 64. Certain waves move through the business world, and computers had transformed his workplace in the 1980s. He had not bothered to join The Movement, his life at work was getting to be a grind, and frankly, he had struggled with the interior conflict of being a minister’s kid full of ethics and morality while he worked in business. That he worked for a nominal non-profit (a Catholic nun-supported hospital) didn’t seem to make enough of a difference. When he figured that 64 didn’t make that much difference from 65, he bailed.

And only four months later, he found his way to the street he had ‘known’ as a newly born infant. He had my mother take this photo:

In 2013 my father died in December. My mother died in 2019. It was then I inherited all of their photos. Despite common sense saying in a whispered scream, “No! Just throw them away!” I instead sorted through every one of them last fall, noting the ones which documented salient events and/or salient people in our family lives or of my parents’. I ran across the above photo at that time, and smiled when I saw the address written on the back of the photo. Since we were talking about a trip to Michigan, I thought, “why not recreate the photo?” And thus in July 2023…..

I take a weird satisfaction in knowing it sometimes was weeks before a baby went home with its mother in 1925, and therefore, I stood in front of this house almost exactly 98 years after my father was carried into it. It’s funny how much stock is placed in this house since my father was moved at the age of 3 and never saw it again (to the best of my knowledge) until he was 64. I don’t know the address of his home in Edina, MN, where he lived from 3 to 14, nor do I know exactly where he lived in Havre, MT, during high school–I have a pretty good guess since they were always living in a parsonage provided by the local Baptist church.

As a side note, the resident of the house acted very graciously for all of the photos which were taken. (My wife didn’t understand the framing I wanted when she took the first set.) I went to the door to explain why someone would be doing such a weird thing. I couldn’t tell if he merely relaxed to know it wasn’t anything nefarious, or whether he just didn’t care.