Going...Going...Gone

knew she cared or she wouldn’t have pulled a kid aside that was nothing to her except one of many little kids running around. I put on the bra without further protest.

Mrs. Powell’s house is still the same color after all these years—40 years, can it really be that long? On past her house to the Logsdon’s. Years ago a top story was added. My brother liked Jana and Phil Thompson held her down while my brother kissed her. First grade I think. Jana didn’t appreciate it too much! Next to the Logsdon’s, the Thompson’s. How many times I watched Susan practice cheerleading and wanted to be one too. On the right Kelly and Scott Shaw. I had a crush on Scott that lasted an eternity and Kelly was my best friend. Her birthday was November 20th and mine the 24th. When we were smaller, we would play with no one else from her birthday until mine was over.

Next to the Shaw’s, the Jordan’s …Pam, Jacky, Tommy, and Donald. Donald would come out with a towel pinned around his neck and the big boys would lift him high up to fly just like Mr. Terrific, (the guy who took the power pill…I think.) Then me…and my brother. We lived next to the Jordan’s. I loved my room. When I had to move, there was a lose piece of wood in the parquet floor and I put a note in there saying the house was mine and always would be. In my heart, it still is. We owned Mr. Swiss and how many times I walked down there and back or to Ben Franklin’s and back or Git n Go, I can’t say. I was all over that neighborhood.
 

Next to us, Mr. Dobbs and across the street Bruce Pullman. My brother and Bruce nearly burned Mr. Dobbs house once when they played with matches. Boy, did they get it! That reminds me of the time my brother and I were playing in the backyard with firecrackers…Black Cats… and our Mimosa Tree had ants in it. My brother didn’t like that so we put what totaled 500 Black Cats in the tree and set them all off. Oh my gosh, the whole limb blew off!

At that same time, he was supposed to be mowing the lawn and left the gas out. I kicked it over and it rolled under the gas hot water tank. Of course, Kelly was back there with me and she starts stuttering and pointing. I turn around and the garage door frame was on fire, the result of the turned over gas and hot water tank. We were really in trouble this time. Kelly and my brother crawled over the fence on top of each other (I’ve always wondered why they didn’t just open it) and I ran next door to tell Maebelle to call the fire department. My mom came just in time and manned the garden hose and put it out. It’s a good thing too because the fire truck went up Laverne instead of Thompson and they said if she hadn’t done that the house would have been gone. Neighbors came from all over and wanted to know if we were alright, wanted to help.

Next to Mr. Dobbs, Gary, David, and later Lauri (don’t remember how to spell her name.) As we grew older Gray had the neatest 68 or 69 Camaro. We all envied him. I remember David falling or something and biting his tongue through. Ouch! Across the street on Laverne Laura, Leslie, and Lisa Meek. Lisa died while we all lived there, just a little girl about 4 or 5. Before she died she began to drag her leg. I could hardly stand that she was going to die.

Up Laverne, Vicki Grider. I played at her house a lot. We’d bake cookies in her Easy Bake Oven and one time when an older girl chased us to her house we stood safe just inside her door and yelled at her, “You think you’re hot snot but you’re really cold boogers in a tin can.” LOL Kids! One cold, December day, behind her house I cut a cedar tree to put in my room as a Christmas tree. I worked and worked to get it cut and when I got it home, boy, did it stink! Being stubborn I wouldn’t throw it away after all the work I’d done. It stunk up the whole house but my parents let me have it anyway.

On up from her Chris and Lee Reynolds. Terri and Tammy Haney as well as other friends lived on Laverne and Kelly Shaw got run over by a motorcycle on Laverne. It scraped her back all up and all along her back in the shape of her ribs, huge scabs. They itched her so and the doctors told her not to scratch them or they’d scar. She’d come to my house and beg me to pull them off. I did. That’s what friends do for each other LOL.

The crosswalk that led from Thompson Drive and Laverne Street to Sequoyah is still there but in neglect. I loved that school and went there from 2nd to 7th grade. It was here I ran in track, played numerous neighborhood baseball games, walked the top of the fence, slid down the hill on cardboard boxes to the side of it, watched a boy cut his head open in the drainage tunnel, and slid down the hill in the little woods on a toboggan made for five-- another neighborhood kids prized possession and experienced the best teachers ever! They are what I base the way I teach on and how many times I ran home after hearing a whistle only to find out it was the Jordan’s dad whistling for them and not my mom and the same thing happened to them too. We all ran just in case it was for us and then looked to see who was at the front door of which house. Dang it, it’s Mr. Jordan and off us free ones would go back to play, back to heaven.

One winter Kelly and I made a giant snowman. We rolled the bottom snowball all the way around the block and then another until he was so tall we couldn’t reach to put on his hat and scarf. That was an April snowstorm and the air was so cold and frosty at night, the stars so bright and crisp, you almost believed you could touch them.

It took less than 5 minutes to drive through. The neighborhood still boasts a lot of kids. I see them walking Independence and Thompson and Laverne. All those memories flooded my mind as I drove through. I hope those childhood memories still roam that neighborhood, invisible to the eye and carry on lives in someplace we can’t see.