What you see above arrived on my phone over night. As soon as I saw this I knew I was seeing Spencer Jack. And that Spencer Jack was standing on a flat open field covered with snow.
But, where is Spencer Jack standing I sat and wondered?
This did not look like Mount Vernon. The mound in the background looked too small to be Mount Vernon's Little Mountain. And where does Mount Vernon have a field this flat, near houses? On the west side of the Skagit River? No, can't be there, what with there being no hill at that location.
And then I realized where Spencer Jack was standing.
Maiben Park.
In Burlington. The Washington town I grew up in after moving from Mount Vernon where we briefly were located after moving from my Eugene, Oregon birthing location.
That mound in the background is Burlington Hill. This hill actually looks way bigger in person. Spencer Jack's grandpa and I spent many hours playing on Burlington Hill. Including pushing our bikes to the top for a dangerous high speed coast back down.
Behind Spencer Jack's right shoulder you can see a pink house. To the left of that house is the house I grew up in, 1027 Washington Avenue.
It never dawned on me prior to thinking about it due to seeing this photo, that growing up across from a city park, in a small town of a couple thousand, on a street with sidewalks, with the park having modern restrooms and running water, along with its picnic facilities, and a swatch of old growth forest, why eye witnessing a larger American city of over 800,000 with streets without sidewalks and parks without restrooms, but plenty of outhouses, so surprised and eventually disgusted me.
Wichita Falls, where I am now, is a Texas town much more like the American town I grew up in than the Texas town of Fort Worth, which was my disturbing introduction to Texas...
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