Childhood Memories

I still remember a great many things from my childhood. We never moved, and my folks still live in the house I was born into. We lived on a cul de sac on a private street. There were many kids close to my age, most of them boys. I still recall distinctly each parents' call of their kids to dinner. Both mother and father. I can still hear each door closing. Front doors, garage doors, screen doors. My next door neighbor's radio in his garage was one of the old wood boxes, tube operated, that had its own tonal quality. I can still hear, "Jeremiah was a bullfrog!" streaming out.

We played touch football between all the mailboxes and driveways. Telephone wires were goal posts for kicking field goals. We painted our own baseball diamond in the turn around. We had open hills behind us, where subdivisions now stand. Every year a grass fire came over the hill and headed down toward our houses. Neighbors scrambled and connected garden hoses together to soak shake roofs before the fire department showed up. A father and son down the street raced sprint cars for a hobby that was closer to a living. Their garage was their workshop.

Eleven houses grew to fourteen. Only two original families remain, but most were there for decades. It was a great place to grow up.