Can I share something a bit long, a bit odd? Back in mid-February I’d written about going to visit my old apartment here in the city. My friend Robin emailed me a day or so later and said that after reading my post, she had a dream where she got to revisit her childhood home.
Wow—I thanked her for passing that along, then thanked her for reminding me to do the same. Y’see, since Google Maps began photographing the planet in February 2005, I’ve been waiting patiently for them to capture MY childhood home. Every so often I’d go on to Google Maps, plug in the address—260 South Cumberland Street—nothing.
But finally, after 17 years there it was. That’s my childhood home on Cumberland Street at the top. It’s weird to see the empty space on it’s left, when I was a child an old Polish woman named Katie lived in a gray tiled house right next to ours. It was torn down 40+ years ago.

To our right was the Johnsons, and over the years I’ve seen it on realty sites like Howard Hanna being sold again & again!
Not our house though—the people who bought it and moved in after us are still the same owners.
We left there the week before school began, in August 1970. We moved “to the country” 7-8 miles outside of town. It wasn’t really a farm, but at times we had a couple livestock and a giant vegetable garden. We called it the farmhouse and made a lot of happy memories there.
(I’ve talked about our farmhouse before, and after discovering an aerial photograph was taken of it in the 1970s, I shared it here.)
But before the farmhouse, we lived in town in a nice neighborhood that was my world. One block down from us was a pair of sisters the same age as my sister Shawn & myself, Jackie & Sharon Howard. One block down and to the right was a girl in my class, Heidi Sisler. She lived with her parents & brother in an apartment above the bakery.
One block up and to the right was Jeff Tewell and his mountain of comics. John Lacava. Chuck Zimmerman. A girl my older brother was sweet on, Lynn Mancuso. And one block up and to the left was Waynesburg High School. It’s where my parents attended school in the 1950s, and Dads’ brothers & sisters, and where my brainy Aunt Dena was an English teacher. I was very excited to go to that school.

Margaret Bell Miller High School, which is now a middle school
We walked past here every day on our way to South Ward Elementary.
And a block west of this school was my friend Greg Leathers. He was also in my class, and would go on to become the mayor of Waynesburg.
But back when I knew him, he liked to draw like me and had a “Creepy Crawler Maker” where you heated colored goop and poured it into strange bug molds. (I remember it getting really hot; I can’t imagine it being marketed to children today!)
I made a pretty big fuss about moving, I didn’t want to go. But our sister Donda was 18 months old and outgrowing her crib which was in our parents bedroom. Our sister Shawn’s room was too tiny for a second bed.
And Dad, who grew up on a farm, had recently learned of a larger house in the country (on one of the gas company’s wells too, meaning free natural gas).
The last week of school, my teacher Mr. Porter had me stand in front of the class and tell them where I was going in the fall. I told them I’d be attending Leprechaun School in the country.
(It’s actual name was Lippencott School. I don’t remember Mr. Porter correcting me!)
For years afterward the house on Cumberland became my scapegoat, everytime something went wrong. If I was bullied in school, disliked one of my teachers, rejected by a girl, worried I didn’t have enough friends, I’d think “I’m not supposed to be here, my life was in Waynesburg, on Cumberland Street.”
But with all things, I eventually stopped doing that and got on with my life.

Shawn, Steve, myself, Duke & our sister Donda celebrating her first birthday on Cumberland St.
Those feelings made a comeback of sorts, the spring of ‘78. I was a junior at Jefferson-Morgan High School and it was time to take the SATs. The exams were at Waynesburg College, in town. After I arrived and got situated, a couple girls came up to me and said “Doug Morris? Hey guys, look who’s here!”
I was befriended by a group of childhood classmates I hadn’t seen in years, and it was such a warm experience it made my heart ache a little for what might’ve been.
Anyway… I was always appreciative of our years growing up in the country. And with 5 brothers & sisters, we weren’t lacking the company of other kids! But I think this explains why I live where I do now, all these years later. Once a townie, always a townie.
And finally, a goofy but honest-to-God real story
In that house on Cumberland, there were 2 doors that faced one another directly outside the entrance to the kitchen. The door on the left was the basement steps, the right was a shallow closet with shelves, our food pantry.
One day I detected a small loop of twine on the wall in that pantry below the bottom shelf. When I pulled on it, a small square of drywall swung outward, about the size of a slice of bread. When I showed it to my dad and asked what it was, he said he didn’t know as it didn’t look large enough to store anything.
But it WAS big enough to hide my life savings—$2.09, which I kept in a baby-food jar. I placed it in that hole along with one of the Creepy Crawlers Greg Leathers had given me (hoping a rubbery spider would scare off curious fingers). After I closed it, I pulled off that tiny loop of twine.
Over time I forgot about it, until a month or so after we moved to the farmhouse. I told my mom “I left my life savings in our old house!” When she asked where I left it, I said the food pantry. Mom said “Oh honey, a family with 2 daughters moved in there—they probably found & spent it already!”
I didn’t tell her about the hole in the wall below the bottom shelf, but for years I wondered if it was ever discovered. And now, I’d rather not know. I want to believe my life savings of $2.09 is still there, after all these years.
And still being protected by one of the Mayor of Waynesburg’s Creepy Crawlers.