I knew I was gong to Pittsburgh to play in a tournament.  I didn’t know I would be visiting Houston, Pennsylvania between matches.  A rural suburb twenty miles outside the city’s industrial hub, Houston is my father’s hometown.

His family, he says, was “dirt poor” and barely able to sustain the house we found still standing-tired of living, it seemed and shedding its blue paint.  My father pointed to a street corner blanketed with scattered sections of a local paper:  “It was there . . . right there . . . where I stood and looked around me and saw that my future was contained in this town.  It was painful to think of leaving.  That street corner was the center of my universe.”  My father was the first person in his family—the first person in the little mining town—to go to college.  As my father drove me along the unpaved back roads, he tried to find messages and axioms in the half-century old tale, but they did not answer the chain of questions jerked along by my consciousness:  How did he get out?  Why did he come back?  Why did he want to bring me here?  Can I be as proud of my life as he is of his?  What do I have to accomplish to gain such satisfaction? Do I have to do it soon?

His stories stacked on top of each other likes books on a desk.  Each anecdote was another volume from his childhood and I was struggling to keep up with the reading.  We passed the old house six times before he was ready to separate himself from Houston this time.  The children playing outside the house tried to examine us through the tinted glass of our rented car and I shifted uncomfortably in my bucket seat.What opportunities did they have?  What would I do with mine?

“Dad, these people are going to call the police if we keep circling the block.”

Back at our hotel in Pittsburgh, I shouldered my racquet bag and followed my father up the staircase to our room.  On each step, I tried to plant my foot exactly where he had put his.

Things to Notice about This Essay
 
1.  The organization is basically narrative.  The writer’s insights and reflections are incorporated into the story of her visit to Houston, Pennsylvania.

2.  The writer does not tell the reader what this experience means.  It’s a risk, but she assumes we will figure out the connection between her father’s experiences and her own.  The italicized section in the middle guides the reader in understanding the end.

3.  The writer supplies the details needed to create a picture of the place.  The use of realistic dialogue adds credibility.

4.  The essay tells only a small story, but it reveals the writer’s ability both to think about her own experiences and to understand the experiences of other, different people.