A VERY SAD DAY AT GIMP HOUSE

I always look forward to Saturday mornings because right after a quick run through my e mails I go straight to my old home town newspaper. I save it for Saturday's only, rather than checking in every day. It's much more fun to anticipate a good read of what's been going on back there.
I was devastated this morning to see that yet another of my childhood icons had died. I read the whole paper with tears streaming down my cheeks. There was one house between the one I grew up on and the one he grew up in. That family was as much a part of my childhood as my own. There was a path by their garage to the college sports field behind our houses that all of us kids used as a short cut to those fields. The Nivens owned the newspapers in our town and the next city over, Bath. I still remember the younger son, Cam, who lived at home with his parents until he married one of my very good childhood friend's aunt. That was quite an event and my parents, and evryone else were thrilled for them. Cam eventually took over the newspapers from his father and combined them into one larger daily area newspaper. I grew up with that newspaper and even though it was a relatively small newspaper as things go, it is still the standard by which I judge newspapers to this day, and find most lacking. Strange thing about us Longfellow Avenuers. We seem to play musical houses, and either end up back on Longfellow Ave. or living near each other. The last house I lived in in Brunswick was just 4 houses away from the house Cam and Betsey lived in, which was next door to the home of yet another Longfellow family. The parents of that latter family's wife lived in the second house from ours in the other direction. They moved out of town to the country, and bought our house when we moved to the country. Their son bought their old house, and their grandson now lives in our old house. There's something about that street.
This morning when I brought up the Times Record's main page, the first thing that caught my eye was that Campbell Niven had died. Of course that was the first thing I read, and it brought so many of my wonderful memories about my childhood flooding back, and a feeling of utter sadness that yet another remarkable influence on life was now gone forever.