The Brader Estate

I grew up in a mansion on a large plot of land. Our backyard was so large that it had two levels, and our garage had a second floor accessible only by a scary old ladder.

A massive swimming pool provided endless hours of entertainment in the summer heat and a secret cave served as the venue for spelunking adventures.

Our yard included a large rock wall that we scaled to move between the yard's levels.

The house was a massive two story home with a full basement large enough to roller skate in as I played hockey. My second floor bedroom had three large windows overlooking the expanse of our estate.

Yes, we lived on an estate smack dab in the middle of our neighborhood in St. Louis.

I remember the first time I drove past the old bungalow on Mardel as an adult. It didn't look the same. It seemed to have shrunk through the decades since we moved away in 1974. Perhaps nothing was more disappointing, though, than the first time I typed the address into Google Earth and watched as the computer zoomed from a view of the entire globe to an aerial view of the neighborhood.

Google Earth has a way of ruining those wonderful memories with it's satellite images and street views of virtually every inch of the globe that I have ever had the pleasure of wandering. The technology somehow makes everything appear so much different.

Somehow it looks so much smaller...

The massive yard looked like a tiny postage stamp of a yard among an entire neighborhood of postage stamp yards. The spot that once housed the massive pool now a small section of grass barely twenty feet across; the mysterious, two story garage gone completely.

Even the street view picture of the terraced front yard and the house with its massive front porch that once held a swing large enough for all four of us kids was so totally different than the mansion I remembered. One of the beautiful, leaded glass transom windows in the living room now gone; replaced with a window air conditioner.

The Brader Estate had somehow vanished only to be replaced by this miniature replica.

Yet is isn't really gone at all.

Like Dad and Mom and Nana and Papa and Tanda and... the list goes on - it is still there; even if only in the living color and stereo sound of my memories.