Perfect Design?

Here is the Designer Show House Portland 2011 that opened this weekend. Seventeen designers showcase their ideas in redesigns throughout the Hamlen House on the Western Promenade. The home is open now through October 2. Our house was always open, everyday, all day. This place a 'show house'? I'll tell you what a show house was all about. It was the neighborhood hangout 365 days a year. If it wasn't daily football and baseball games on our homemade fields in the backyard, or basketball games in our driveway, well into the darkness, hockey tournaments with our table-top hockey game, around our kitchen table on cold January days, or 8-10 of us guys tenting out in the backyard with pup tents scattered about, it was the secretive meetings of the Skeleton Club in our cellar once a week that made 820 Stevens the place to be. How did our place end up being the place to be at Morrill's Corner? Was it because the house was big, the yard was spacious or just in a central space? Well, probably it was a little bit of all of those. Throw in kid-frendly parents and you'll probably have the picture. Designer house? No way! A great place to grow up? It was the perfect 'design' for a childhood.