Used to live here!

When I was a kid, we lived in this house on Beal Street, East Lansing, Michigan — when JFK ran for office in 1959. My room was in the dormer. Happiest three years of our lives were probably spent here. The house is walking distance from the Beal Botanical Gardens at MSU, across the way.The main library was next to those gardens. The Red Cedar River flooded now and then and drowned out the specimen C. sativa, just down the row from thyme and peppermint. A brisk walk on the other bank of the river would take you down to Spartan Stadium on a sparkling October Saturday. I kept a snapping turtle in a tub in the basement for awhile, and fed it bologna; finally gave it back to the river, fat and irritable. There was a yappy black Scotty terrier across the road, a harmless terror. Up the road, a spaniel who chased cars, bikes, anything with wheels — it turned into a grease spot under the tires of an unsympathetic sedan.