A Short Trip Down Memory Lane

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A few days ago, my sister sent me an email with a link to the Google Maps photo of the house where our family lived for a long time. I lived there for 9 years of my childhood. Unfortunately, my memories of living there aren't what my sister's are. Most of my childhood was spent being abused so I don't have real fond memories of that house. However, that being said, I know that my siblings do have fond memories and my parents worked hard for that house. Approximately 20 years ago, my father lost his business and the IRS decided to accuse him of being a thief because the controller for his company didn't pay $150,000 in payroll taxes. The IRS also decided to make an example of my Dad and they took everything my parents worked for all those years. They called my parents dishonest and accused them of all sorts of things in the media. The sad thing is that a lot of the reason my Dad lost his business is because the economy in Texas bottomed out because of the oil industry back then and my Dad owned apartment complexes, shopping centers and office complexes. So when the economy went south, so to speak, people had to move out of the area to find work and his apartment complexes, office buildings and shopping centers went vacant. My Dad kept hoping things would turn around and he even paid the salaries of his employees for a year out of his own pocket to keep them from losing their jobs. They didn't know that he had done that and they accused him of such horrible things. I wonder how they would have felt had they known what he did for them. He went from $30 million in the bank one year to losing everything including his home the next. My parents were forced to leave their home with hardly anything they once owned. My parents were devastated. It hit my mother harder than anyone because she had to watch my father's name being dragged through the mud in the media. People who claimed to be my parents' friends slandered their names and treated them like dirt. A lot of these people got rich off of my father's hard work. He used to take his staff on ski trips and trips to the Bahamas, Lake Tahoe and New York, among other places. He bought countless meals for more people than I could begin to count and he didn't deserve what these people did to him. When I saw the photo of the house, it was very fuzzy and you can't really see how beautiful it was. There was a "for sale" sign in the front yard. I don't know how old the photo is but what crossed my mind is that one day when my businesses are successful, I'd love to buy it and allow a family in need to move in and live there. I would pay for the expenses of the house because a low income family couldn't afford it but I think it would be a fitting return for what happened to my parents to help someone else in need through that house. Okay, I guess that's all of my trip down memory lane. By the way, this happened in Louisiana and Texas.