May 15th 9:07pm

Between the late 1950’s through the mid 60’s periodically my parents on a Friday night would load us into the Ford wagon and make the four-hour drive to Evansville. My mother was born there, as were all but one of us. We lived there until I was three.

As a small boy at night I would sometimes lie on my parents’ bed and follow the lights as they moved across the walls and ceiling, from the cars that drove by on Riverside drive. There was a fireplace in their second floor bedroom and a closet you could walk through to another bedroom in which I slept with some of my brothers and sisters.

In the middle of the night I would walk through this opening and climb in bed with my parents. This would happen on most nights until it was time for my younger sister to have her turn.

My father had found work in central Indiana and would leave on Sunday night and returned late the following Friday night. My mother told me many years later I would run in circles when he would leave. I do remember the chocolates with caramel wrapped in silver he would bring back.

It was in the late 50’s we moved to his work. And so we would return from time to time to visit our only Grandmother and my mothers’ two brothers Joe and Louis and their families.

There were times I would study the pair of pocket doors that were between the living and dining rooms. The doors had a full wall on each side. I would wonder what kind of magical things were hidden as I tried to peek inside the walls. I was intrigued by the button when pushed would slide out a handle on the edge of the doors. How the curved astragals from each door would come together inside each other so you couldn’t see light in between when closed.

There were steam radiators under the low windows on the south side of the dining room. When we would sit at the table it always seemed like one of us would fall back in our chair and hit our head against them. Crying would be involved.

But it was the dining room table that seemed to draw us all together. It had come from my Great Great Grandfathers’ furniture shop. He had been a 49er. It took him six years to find enough gold to start the shop and business in Evansville.

The table is round when closed. Then pulls apart. When adding the five leaves it creates a place of gathering and sharing. On some Saturday nights we would all be together, my uncles, aunts and cousins.

Lilly was my grandmothers’ helper and had been with her for decades. Someone told me she was the first black lady in Evansville to own her own home. She would bring us wonderful meals she had prepared from scratch. She didn’t talk much as I remember, but you would never cross her. We were taught to obey our elders, which Lilly was certainly one.

As we enjoyed our food we would listen to our parents’ and grandmother’s conversations.

When the meal was over we would play and explore throughout the large house. But there were times I would slip way from my cousins, brothers and sisters, as we traversed the stairwells of the basement, second floor and sometimes the attic of 1119 Riverside Drive.

I would sneak into a darkened kitchen and peak through it’s door into the lighted dining room and watch my grandmother, my parents, aunts, uncles and maybe my oldest sister and brothers sitting around the table speaking. Sometimes they would laugh; sometimes they would speak of their parents, sometimes of the things that were happening in the world. Most things they talked about I did not understand, but I did know that a day would come when I would sit at the table, of the 49er with my uncles Louis and Joe, my parents and their parents and the ones I have never met.