The Old Neighborhood

When I was growing up, I knew everybody in my neighborhood. That was just the way things were. It was a great training ground for life. Each neighbor had role in the development of the young minds that lived on our street. Fables of the more livelier characters were passed on from generation to generation in secret circles held in twilight hours on dew filled lawns. All of us poised for the moment the street lights would come on and we would have to go home.

For instance, Mrs. Lake was mean. She never gave out candy on Halloween and if you dared step on her manicured lawn there was going to be trouble. My sister Renee was elevated to legendary status the summer she imprinted her hand in the wet cement of their new sidewalk. It remains, to this day, some 37 years later.

Mrs. Pryor lived in the middle house on our block. Her front lawn was flanked with over grown lilac bushes that had "picker" bushes growing in them. They were like a magnet for Huffy bikes and inexplicably you couldn't pass her house without getting yourself tangled in the mess.
I will never forget the day my mother had to rescue me from the picker bushes. I had torn my pants, again, and my knee was bleeding. My mother grabbed my bike with one hand, grabbed me with the other, and began apologizing to Mrs. Pryor for the inconvenience of it all. "I am so sorry, it won't happen again, I'll keep her on our side of the block" my mother said as we walked away. "Oh, that's alright, dear, I am glad she is okay," Mrs. Pryor crooned. I turned to look at her and I swear, as God is my witness, horns sprouted from her head and fangs shot out from her mouth as black smoke surrounded her evil head. I didn't ride my bike for week.

Then there was the Smith family. They lived across the street. They had 2 children, Martin and Carol. My sister and I loved going over there. Carol was older than we were. Everything about her was fascinating. She wore eye make up and rolled her long hair in curlers the size of orange juice cans. We were just sure that she had to be dating the captain of the football team because she was so pretty. She had her own car too. She was cool and I wanted to be just like her when I got to high school.

One block away from us was a row of apartment buildings. My parents cautioned us to stay away from the area. "Transient housing" my father called it. However, in the middle building lived a family with children our age. The parents seldom spoke English. Interesting, very interesting. My sister and I spent many hours watching them through the bushes. And, when we couldn't find anything better to do, spying on the Greeks was as good as it got.

Behind our house lived the notorious Maras family. Nobody was quite sure just how many children they had. The Maras kids were feared and revered. Most of the windows were broken in their house, and the kids never had shoes on their feet. Everybody was afraid of them, except for my dad. There were a couple of times I had seen him make them cowar back to their home. This made me very proud, but I never gloated. After all, my dad went to work everyday. Didn't want an incident while he was gone.

We played Tin Can Alley and hide-and-seek with all the neighbor kids. We even tried playing "Capture the Flag" one time, but we spent so much time establishing the rules that we gave up before too long, settling for Kick Ball instead. We dug for fossils in Sabatini's yard. We never found any, but we were sure there had to be some there.

Life was good. The days were long and warm and full of adventures. I wish I would have appreciated it more.