The last time The Blue Bottles Writing Studio group met, we read our stories created from a prompt on childhood: Your neighbor -‘hood.’ Where did you grow up? Here are some short excerpts from each of the writers in the group. What I enjoy the most is despite the different ages and lifestyles we’ve lived, there are still a lot of similarities in our growing up years. I hope you enjoy reading these shortcuts from the stories and return to read more on another occasion.
I. G.
All of the neighborhoods of my early childhood were blessed by warmth and sunshine, which may account for why now I have Seasonal Affective Disorder (SAD) when cold, dreary weather arrives in the Northwest. After Hawaii, we moved to Mather Air Force Base just outside of Sacramento, CA. First we lived in a civilian neighborhood called Parkhills Estate, after which we moved on base. I remember the home in Parkhills for the tall grape stake fence that kept our boxer, Blitz, safe. I remember how Blitz hated the garbage men. I remember a cute blonde kid named Roger, who walked by my house one day told me to pucker-up and how I had to ask my mother what pucker-up meant, then how flattered I was that Roger wanted to kiss me. I also remember the man who wanted to buy our house but first had to examine the crawl space first as a suitable habitation for his pet skunks.
G.E.
Sometimes snowball throwers do get their just desserts. I remember a couple of young kids were throwing snowballs at passing cars on Madison Avenue (an East-West Road in New Milford). Well, these kids didn’t really care which cars they were pelting, They threw snowballs at every vehicle. Unfortunately for these young hooligans, their next victim was a New Milford High School bus. However, this wasn’t just an ordinary school bus, it contained the entire New Milford track team, returning from a dual meet.Right after the snowballs hit his windows, the school bus driver screeched the bus to a halt and opened the door. About half a dozen varsity trackmen leapt out of the bus and chased down the two kids. The trackmen washed the kids’ faces in the snow, to the applause of the entire track team. I witnessed this event and filed it under “ways of the world.” To wit:
“When throwing snowballs at passing vehicles, DO NOT throw at a track team bus. That’s just plain stupid.”
E. J. P.
Until I was fourteen, my ‘hood’ was the wide open spaces of the fields around me, the rivers and hills, and the sea. If I had a companion, it was usually my dog. But usually, I played by myself, inventing and recreating adventures I read about. I’m not sure if I knew, back then, if I preferred my own company because of preexisting trauma or if it was just the way it was because of the isolated places and homes we lived in. I knew I was happy being alone, with my dolls and imagination. If a special kind of person happened to come into my sphere, I enjoyed their company for whatever period it lasted, be sad for a while, find another creative outlet, yet never forget the person.
D. B.
My best friend Melissa didn’t live in our neighborhood. She lived a mile or two away on the other side of the freeway in a neighborhood constructed around a golf course. We routinely rode our bikes between our houses when we couldn’t get a parent to drop us off. One of our favorite things to do was to walk up to the small shopping center on my side of the freeway. There we would hangout at the Woolworth’s counter and drink Cokes and eat French fries as we discussed our purchases of cheap ID bracelets or hair clips. As we got older we would spend more time in Carson Pirie Scott, the department store at the end of the mall trying on clothes and gossiping about schoolmates.
D. H.
It was considered a ‘safe’ neighborhood, where people regularly filled the sidewalks and playgrounds, and where a bike was all a kid needed to roam freely and visit friends. Kids walked to the neighborhood school. Yet, this was also the time in my life where my mom worked the 3pm-11pm shift at the hospital and we were considered old enough to be home alone. Rather than being able to fully enjoy our new ‘hood’, we became what the media deemed “latch key kids” — straight home from school, in time to answer the phone call that would come within a few minutes of our arrival, and then again randomly throughout the evening to check on us. We stayed inside, watching General Hospital and any number of reruns, eating spaghetti o’s heated in a saucepan on the oven. It was the weekends we looked forward to– when we could venture out into our neighborhood, explore the creeks, and go to friends’ houses to jump on their trampolines or swim in their pools.
A. S.
Your Hood/ My Hood
Yours was in the 80s and 90s.
Mine was in the late 90s and early 2000s.
Yours started in the midwest, the majority was in Charlotte, then you were out on your own.
Mine started in Charlotte but the majority was in Mooresville.
You matured early, appearing much older than your actual age.
I was a late bloomer; mom called me her “Chubby Bunny”.