My grandfather, at my age

Me and my maternal grandfather, "Pie" (Dec. 1901–Aug. 1982, so called because a visit with him always entailed grandmother's –Mimi's– unforgettable scratch-made apple pie à la mode, so warm and so cold, fragrant spice throughout the house, the main reason I needed to see them, in my child's greedy little mind), near the corner of Ferndale & Morris, across the street from their enchanted house (basement full of tools, attic full of treasure).

I'm, what?, three years old, making this 1959 or 60. So very strange that I can google the location today, and see the street view, and follow them to the water tower a couple of blocks away, and the train tracks in the other direction. I can hear the four-propellored Douglas DC-7s dopplering overhead on their way to Newark Metropolitan. I can hear the whistle and the rumble of the Erie-Lackawanna commuter train that took Pie to work.

I can see, hear, smell my grandfather, who was my current age in this photo, and remember his jaunty cane, his strong but labored breath (Lucky Strikes, emphysema...), his proud bearing, his strong hands, his thick Cantabrian accent. There is something poignant, graceful, dynamic about our stances in this photo, not so much posed as poised...