General Electric

The house I grew up in had a small front yard. Well, it was actually located along the side of the house and was about 8 feet wide and 18 feet long. My father had some people lay down grass and install a faux grotto at the far side of the lawn. It wasn't big by any stretch of the imagination, but I loved that yard. My brother and I would horse around in the afternoons and I made a habit of laying down on the grass on hot summer evenings. I can still see the dim incandescent bulb that lighted the entire lawn up to now. That single bulb would beat any form of landscape lighting hands down. Its soft glow was somehow sympathetic of warm April evenings, and was not unlike a portal of some sort as it led me to places faraway. We eventually sold the house and the new owners got rid of the yard and had it made into a driveway. The last time I looked the fixture that held my favorite bulb was still there, but one of those new energy-efficient lamps now lit the front of the house. In some bizarre way, that was enough to tell me that my youth, much like the house and the yard, was no longer mine.