The other day I was chatting with a sweet lady (I had just met) on FB and we were reminiscing about the street we both use to live on and who lived in which house and who moved away and when so and so moved in and all sorts of other interesting (to no one but us) facts we were trying to get straight (after all these years). Anyway, I think we figured out all the whos, whens, wheres, and whats (with the help of some other friends on FB who chimed in, don't you just love social networking) soooo, I thought I would drive by (don't live too far away) to visit the old neighborhood. A few changes here and there, but what was really intriguing (after talking with my (new) FB friends) is that I realized when my family moved out of the neighborhood, I gave no thought that others had moved in and started making memories of their own. Anyway, these are my memories. Funny, the things you remember...
The Cooks lived here. If Coolidge Cook (my Daddy's best friend) and Bill Montgomery (my Daddy) couldn't fix it, you just as well throw it away. They built a go-cart (for the Cook boys) and had a track in their backyard. I wasn't allowed to ride it because I was a girl.
The Dawes lived here. I went to school with Jimmy and Bobby. They had a boxer that bit my sister one time. Funny, the things you remember...
The Greens lived here. Timmy and Johnny were athletes who pole vaulted in their backyard all the time. Their mom, Helen Green, worked at Dillard's and I would see her for many years after we moved...at Dillard's. Timmy (thank you for your service) died in the Vietnam war.
The Huttos lived here. We loved to play in The Creek by their house. The Creek provided endless hours of heavy duty play for all the kids in the neighborhood. Always fun to catch crawdads in The Creek, too.
The Montgomerys lived here. My Daddy had a huge garden in the backyard and beginning in the 5th grade, I would make dinner, quite often, for our family. My Nannie taught me how to cook and
the art of making cornbread. We had potatoes every night for what seemed like an eternity. The Creek ran by our house, too. We would dam it up and swim in it, at times. Yuck! Lots of good memories (and, lots of not so good)...
The Pages lived here. John and Ann Page were Catholics and had a large family. We played in their backyard often. I wonder if the swing set and slide are still back there after all these years.
A man named Perry lived in this house. He had a nice wife, but that's all I remember. This house is the same (unremodeled) as it was back in the 50s when these homes were built.
The Smiths lived here. Jerry Smith got a Mohawk haircut which I thought was really silly looking. Still do.
This is The Creek. The chain link fence in this pic would never have kept all of us out of The Creek, way back then. I remember tying a string to a wallet, hiding in the culvert in The Creek, and waiting for people to come by and try to pick up the wallet as we tugged the string and laughed our heads off at the unsuspecting victim.
This is where Mr. Hickman had his grocery store.When I would walk home from
North Heights Elementary, I would usually have a nickel (leftover from the quarter I would carry for lunch) to spend (at Hickman's) for a treat. I would opt for a little round tube of Spanish peanuts. Or, maybe a Snickers. Most days, in the summertime, when school was out and my mother worked, we would walk to Hickman's (with a crisp dollar my mother would leave us for lunch) and get three slices of bologna, a package of Lay's potato chips (the big one) and three Cokes (we would return the bottles and not have to pay a deposit). We would then trek back home, make our bologna sandwiches, eat all the chips, and sip on those sugary sweet Cokes as we watched
Another World on the television. And, we always had change from the dollar to give to Mother. Funny, the things you remember...
