Last week, my daughter drove me to pick up my car so I could travel north, back home, 45th High School Reunion.
I was so glad that we had this time, alone in car together. It had been a while. She was leaving on Sunday to go back to Knoxville for her senior year. She had not been home in two summers.
We reflected about the summer. It was fun. It went by quickly. "I just needed to be home mom." I understood. " I just wanted to be in my room, in my bed. And with you in dad in our house." I got it. She revealed that she did regret not going back to the ranch and being home for the summer was different. Most of her friends were gone and she was the "master of the double shift".
And when I got back from Pittsburgh, she would be in Knoxville, Tennessee. I felt sad. It had all gone by too quickly.
So, I hopped in my car and headed north. First stop, pick up my reunion date, my brother. I am certain people think it is strange that I take my brother, but reunions are not Franklin's thing, and my brother knows a ton of people in my class, the advantage of a small town with a big neighborhood.
My brother and made it to our destination with a few minutes to spare so, we went through our neighborhood. We moved from one neighborhood, to the next one over, just in time for me to start first grade in Bel Aire Manor.
As we pulled into the neighborhood, the trees were huge, every empty space now had a home on it, the dump (where we rode bikes, looked at Playboy magazines and played with tadpoles) was a street filled with new homes and they were all so close together. As we started up the hill, that I swear was steeper when I was a kid, I could see the backside of our house. Trees were gone, the wall no longer, the split rail fence absent and the siding painted. The front of the house was barely recognizable. 
The sidewalk was concrete, no stones, the shutters an ugly color and the front porch was so small. The birch tree on the side of the house the brushed against my bedroom window, gone. Talk about a letdown. This was not the way to start the weekend. The neighborhood looked rundown and old. As drove up the hill, the neighbors, they had passed away, moved away or we had no idea who lived there now.
It was one of the saddest moments in my life and I will never forget it. My brother said, "I am never going by here again."I spent the entire weekend living in the past, old friends, old classmates, old times. Old neighborhoods
After I dropped my brother off on Sunday morning, I just kept thinking about the old "hood" and summertime in the hood. And my daughter driving nine hours from the NC coast to Knoxville for the first time. I was a wreck.
And I kept thinking about Addie saying that she just wanted to be home for the summer in her own bed.
When we were young and not allowed to ride our bikes out of the driveway, (seriously, we had our driving permits before we were allowed to leave the driveway on our bikes) we played, "Village". "Village" meant you had a job in the village. I had an easy bake oven so I had a bakery. My mom would save all of the old Christmas jimmies and sprinkles and I would bake and bake.
Donnie M was the owner of the gas station. He would take the baseball cards and my mom's clothespins and secure those baseball cards so when we took off, they stayed and made that click, click sound.
Lisa taught school under the infamous giraffe sliding board (only infamous because about nine kids broke their arms from falling off this sliding board).
Todd really only played on the sand with his Tonka trucks, and he was obsessed with Tonkas.
The Twins were police. Lisa worked at the police station.
There was only one business...each kid owned the business. The new kids in the hood, they were the citizens.
My dad called it Communist Russia, we called it Village.
One hot days, my mom would come down with her invention, frozen Tang in the ice cube trays...wrapped in a napkin that stuck to the ice cube...we sucked and sucked those things. I can still hear my mom saying, "and pick up your napkins, don't want to see any in the yard."
When my mom was in a really good mood, she would pull out the old bedspreads and clothespins and let us pin them around the trees like little yurts or forts. We would sit in there sweating our little asses off but we loved bedspread tents.
Then, we grew up and sold the Village and moved to the front porch. Girls and Barbies at one end, boys and GI Joe at the other end.
Daily, Barbie would visit GI Joe in her car, they would lay down on the bed, then we stuck Kleenex up Barbie's dress, and she was pregnant and the next day she would lay on her bed and push out a baby while GIJoe watched.
He was the father after all.
My mamaw came one day and saw us sitting, playing Barbie on the cool cement and told us that we were going to get hemorrhoids from sitting on the cement. My behind never touched that cool cement again. I had seen the commercials for Preparation H and wanted no parts of "roids."
It was about this time when my aunt and uncle, who lived a quarter mile away, put an inground pool, with diving board and slide, in their backyard. We got up, did chores and then we swam. We dove. We had relay races, my mamaw tried to see if we knew how to smoke (only my brother at age nine) and we only stopped swimming if there was a mean game of Red Rover going down. There were backyard picnics on a regular basis with my Uncle Bernard starring as the Grill Master. He stood at the grill with an emerald green glass with a white G on it (we were never allowed to drink out of that glass) and he would slice hotdogs and place a Kraft single in the opening, cut them up and serve with toothpicks as an appetizer. Many nights, my mom went home and let us stay in the pool with my aunt or uncle, and she would later appear, carrying a piece of her Tupperware collection, with macaroni salad or Texas Sheet cake for the picnic. We lived for that pool and in that pool.
Annually, the Sanders Family would host the Jerry Lewis Backyard Carnival to fight MS. We would walk up to the Sanders House, Scott, Marcie and Mark, with our quarters and dimes to retrieve gifts in the sandpile or pie throwing contest. It was the "big" summer event.
Shortly after this stage, we discovered dodge ball. We played on the streets. In the evenings, the parents would join. We made up our own rules...if you were knocked out, and you made it for 10 throws, you got to come back in. We played for hours.
After dodgeball, our parents would let us play Hide-N-Seek passed the streetlight coming on. Imagine this! We didn't have central air, so they could hear us, and about an hour later, the yell out the front door game and the game was over.
The next summer, something strange happened, puberty. I didn't want to walk across the street to help my dad in the garden, but I would walk to White Valley School Playground on the trail, in the hot summer sun in weeds, for summer rec. (I still cannot believe my mom let us walk on the trail...about five miles alone. Cannot believe it). We walked to play kickball with boys. Insane. I had a Happy Days T-shirt (I scored in Florida with my Aunt Judy and cousins) that I wore every day to summer rec. I was pretty sure it made me look skinny. We played kickball like we were Olympians.
The next year, I saved my babysitting money to buy painter's pants to wear to the St. John's Catholic Church Summer Festival. I swear, going to that fair, and being allowed to walk around "with just my friends" in the parking lot, was like being Tinkerbell at Disneyworld. When my grandfather, Bill Ball, saw me wearing painter's pants and earth shoes, he lost it. I will never forget him coming up to me and saying, "what in the hell are you wearing?".
The next summer, summer rec, kickball, painter's pants, all went away. "We all worked. We worked hard for the money" as my Donna Summer LP album said. I worked at the Snack bar at Meadow Wink Swim Club. I will never forget the day, a little guy with a crew cut, a bit of a sunburnt nose, pounded his quarter on the counter to get my attention. I turned around and he said, "I would like a male Hershey Bar, please". "A male Hershey bar?" "Yes, one with nuts."
He giggled and giggled and giggled. I was sixteen when I waited on the little guy, and I still remember him and the Male Hershy bar.
Basically, my summer fun was over. I was saving for Calvin Klein Jeans and the Fleetwood Mac Rumors album.
About this time in my thought process, I talked to one of my classmates who had been there since kindergarten. We talked about how our little town always was represented well at the reunion. I told her about a picture my mom had of all of us one summer, before first grade, when we all learned to ride our bikes without training wheels. Some of us didn't have any front teeth. All the girls had braids and the boys summer crew cuts. We moved right after that picture was taken my mom told me.
Before my brother and I left for Maryland, we stopped by Twin Valley Cemetary to see my mom. I whipped around that cemetery road and pulled up under the big oak tree. We got out, I said "mom, we are here and there isn't any bird shit on your marker (her big fear was that her marker would be covered with bird shit being under that tree, but she wanted some protection from the sun. I am not making this up.) Todd looked down, looked up and said, "I am never coming back here again."
We got back into the car, and we left. Total time at Twin Valley Cemetary, about 45 seconds, give or take.
We drove out of town by our old grocery store, (the one you drove to daily after you got your license for mom), our Church, our Elementary School and onto the highway headed home.
The past behind, the future in front.
After I dropped my brother, and got back in the car, heading south, the passenger seat was empty and nobody was coaching me on my driving, it occurred to me, we probably needed to make that trip together, back home. It might be the only time that ever happens.
When I opened up the photo album to find these pictures, I swear they were just taken yesterday. I looked at some of the pictures in my album and I can remember them being taken like it was yesterday. And bam, 63 years later...
I thought back to my daughter, would she be disappointed in years to come if she drives by her childhood home? Would she remember those hours of Manhunt, the pool and Halloween nights? Would she remember her summer fondly as she drove down Shoreline and tell her husband or maybe be her brothers and say, "remember Pat and George?" "Remember the big swing set in the back or Ruthie and Willie are buried over there with the blueberry bushes?
And would she drive away sad? Sad because her parents were gone or because it seemed like yesterday her bedroom was on the far right where the sun came in?
In the days that followed, I started processing the weekend, old friends, old home, new friends, new life...you know all of it. Here is what I know for certain, my brother and my cousins and all of the hood kids, lived the best possible lives from ages 6-18. No doubt. And it was very impressionable and memorable when raising our children. And there is no place like home.
Even if it is just in your memories.
* house 1970
house 1968
broken arm 1972
hood pictures 1974
mom on porch 1979
