When I was five - in 1944 - my alcoholic father picked me and my younger brother up from my mother's house in California for his weekly Sunday visit. And he never brought us back.
It took three years for a detective to find us in Fall Creek, Oregon, where he'd taken us. We were there seven years before she was able to get us back.
Yesterday we visited that town while on a trip to the Northwest. And it was kind of bittersweet.
We took pictures of the house my father had built for us by a river. Amazingly, it was still standing and in great shape after 70 years. The man living there said he was renting it for $850 a month.
We stopped at the First Christian Church across the street from the house, and took more pictures. I’d spent every Sunday there for seven years. Even though it was over 100 years old, it was also well-maintained.
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We passed the grammar school I went to, which now was closed. It had been converted to a private home so looked completely different. No pictures.
We bought water at the 100 plus year old store where I used to shoplift candy. More pictures.
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The town has grown from 300 to 1500 since I left. Yet it is still a quiet and beautiful postcard town. When one views it on Google it looks almost like a large park.
But remnants of the physical and emotional scars I carry from the years I spent there with a raging drunken father still linger. I long ago dealt with the trauma. But that still doesn’t erase memories.
It's an example of how being from an alcoholic family can have damaging life-long effects.
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