My Old Neighborhood

When I think back to my childhood neighborhood, the whole world consisted of about twelve houses. My Aunt Mary, Uncle Pete and Cousins Paula, Michelle, Karen and Mark lived four houses down from us. In between there were The Reiman’s, a lady named Karen with a big dog, and Norma and Joe. The houses coming from the corner to our house had Frieda-the-crazy-lady, and old Mrs. Farella. From my Aunt’s house to the end of the world were The Anderson’s, The Springer’s, Tony-the-dirty-old-man and his wife, “The Unknown House”, which was visited only at Halloween; and then only if our parents were standing on the sidewalk and lastly The Two-Fat-Brothers house. We lived on the last street in the Village of K*****. We were a village, because we were too small to be a town. Across the street, was the start of the City of B***** and although it was just across the street, it may as well been the Berlin Wall. Like some unspoken rule, the two never met.

Well, actually there was one house, almost directly across the street from us that housed The Boss Family in the upstairs apartment. But, we mostly knew of them as the "trouble-making white trash" that were the bane of many of the neighbors existence; my Mother’s included. We only knew about them because one of the Boss girl’s – Tina- had a crush on my middle brother, much to the consternation of my mother, who was firmly convinced she would try to latch onto him by getting pregnant with the lure of relatively easy sex. I’m sure it evoked many a novena.

Overall, I thought the personalities on our street were pretty interesting. Frieda had the first house after the Wheel Chair Home that was on the corner. Actually I think the name carved in the edifice was The Wheelchair Home for the Incurable. Well, hey, it was built in 1922. I’m sure back then it was politically correct, besides, it did have somewhat of a poetic ring to it. The Wheel Chair Home was my first exposure to a Nursing Home. Everyday we would cut through the parking lot on our way home from school. Without fail, there would be some little old lady peering out from behind a screened window, shriveled and worn, sitting in a wheelchair, asking us to call the police because she was "being held there against her will". I was never really sure if it was the same old lady. The first time it happened I ran all the way home to call the police. When I told my mother what was happening she said, “Oh, yeah, well, they say those things, but she’s O.K.” Eventually I guess I got used to it because I don’t remember trying to call the police again. Funny, when I became a Nurse in a Nursing Home, I recalled that memory and noticed how little has changed. It seems like there’s always one resident who wants someone to call the police.

Anyway, Frieda-the-crazy-lady would dress like a maid in a light blue dress and starched white apron, hairnet and thick rubber soled shoes. She had an immaculately clean blue house both inside and out. Frieda used to wash her driveway nightly, which I thought was a little strange. She didn’t even try to pretend she was watering the hedges, which I thought made it that much stranger. Sometimes she would bring out a scrub brush for an area that had something on it that only she could see. She would watch out the window daily at 3:20 pm to make sure we wouldn’t walk on her grass on our way home from school. Sometimes she would stand on her front porch, arms folded, and stare at us as we walked by. There was many a time I damn near twisted an ankle trying not to tred on so much as a blade of grass on her lawn. The only thing that made her remotely interesting to me was her son. He was a hippie and looked just like Peter Fonda. He even had a motorcycle and wore a black leather jacket. He used to sunbathe in an extremely small black Speedo, right in her backyard. I thought he was totally cool and was secretly in love with him. I guess I have liked hippie’s ever since.

In between Frieda and our house was Old Mrs. Farella, who used to guard her front lawn as well, only she would hide behind the dirt-caked screens of her porch windows and scare the living daylights out of us when she squawked out her objections to our grass treading. My mother insisted she was a very nice lady. Although I admitted that she gave me a card with a few dollars in it every year on my birthday, I was petrified of her. She wore hairnets, and thick-bottomed black shoes too, but she never looked clean like Frieda did. I was sure she never slept and instead spent her hours peering out from behind her windows trying to catch a glimpse of me day or night. Mrs. Farella used to create quite a stir whenever she’d take her old Volvo out for a drive. Barely four feet tall, and almost eighty she was too blind to be driving, but she drove nonetheless. She would back her car out the driveway until she hit the fire hydrant across the street from her house, and then she would stop, put the car in drive, and pull away. One day, the fire hydrant had enough and fought back. Gushes of water spouted out of its cracked base as a frightened but defiant Old Mrs. Farella dealt with the police who showed up. That was back in the days when the police actually showed up at the scene of accidents. We watched as the police officer flipped through his ticket book, writing off ticket after ticket. Though the Volvo sat in the garage for months, one day it made its reappearance. It took her a while to get her nerve up. She began by starting it up in the garage, just sitting behind the wheel – sometimes for hours. We were all afraid she would be gassed. Eventually she worked up the courage to back it out into the driveway. She would leave it running a while and then drive it back in the garage. No one thought it was a good idea for her to drive, but the sight of her struggling to overcome her fear, and her desires to drive that car, invoked a pity that softened my harsh view of her ever so slightly. Only many years later, did I realize the fierce desire came from the need to hold on to her independence. One day she broke free, and the Volvo was on the road again. We could almost hear the fire hydrant sigh as we watched, mouths hanging open, at the sight of Mrs. Farella driving on the wrong side of the road until she reached the corner to turn. She did manage to steer completely clear of the fire hydrant though.

Our house was the only “Double” on our block. “We” consisted of my Mother, Father, my two younger brothers, and a poodle named Timmy. I was the eldest, which had its good and bad points. I used to want a sister, but looking back on it now, I probably just wanted to have a Second in Command. My Father worked at Chevrolet, along with most of my family. I didn’t know it then, but we were doing fairly well. Solidly middle class, we really didn’t want for much of anything. It wasn’t until I struck out on my own, that I realized how much of that I took for granted. My Grandmother lived upstairs from us and had for as long as I could remember. There was one brief period when she developed an itch and a longing for days gone by. She bought her old house down on the West side on a bit of a whim and, in spite of my Mothers protests, went to live there. After she moved out my Mother rented the apartment to a young couple with a baby. For the first time in my short life, I couldn’t go into the upstairs apartment of the house. Meanwhile, My Grandmother realized the West side had changed a lot in thirty years, especially after a man was shot right on her front lawn. Petrified and lonely, she cried every day and required a family member to sleep over nearly every night. Meanwhile, the Man upstairs from us would constantly fight with his wife and one day he threw their baby on the couch. My Mother went storming up there and told him off. Turning and yelling at the girl, she told them both to make arrangements to leave. My Grandmother moved back in after being gone almost a year and a half.

On the other side of us were The Reiman’s. The Reiman’s had a lot of kids. Mr. Reiman was a truck driver and drove a big 18-wheeler. Sometimes he would pick up the kids or his wife and they would ride in the truck with him. Early in the gray dawn I would see Judy or one of the other kids waiting by the curb. It used to make me jealous. I wanted to be picked up in a semi-truck, too. I imagined the adventure of the road and wished my father drove a semi-truck. Most of the Reiman kids were girls. They always seemed to have a lot of fun and were friends with both my cousins and me. It was a vicious rectangle. Judy, who really was the only one young enough to be my friend, would drop me like a hot potato whenever my older cousin’s Michelle and Paula showed her any attention. If I didn’t like her so much, I would have never spoken to her again for her constant betrayals. One day they moved far away. When you’re a kid long distance best friends don’t work well, and after a few valiant letters and phone calls, we lost touch.

Next door to The Reiman’s was Karen, The-Lady-with-the-Big-Dog. Her comings and goings were of great interest to us, since she wasn’t married and didn’t have any children. We speculated a great deal about her, and regrettably, seemed to cause her much aggravation. She used to rent out rooms in her house to borders. This was viewed very dimly by my mother and the other neighborhood women. It was a common denominator that they could gossip about. Karen was “single”, and that was always said like it was a sin. One man she had staying there had only one arm. My brothers and I decided he was an ex-convict and probably a murderer. Still, I couldn’t help but be mesmerized every time I watched him light up a cigarette out on the front stoop. One day Karen’s dog ran out into the street and was hit by a car. We all crowded around the horrifying sight of the wounded dog, and Karen-The-Lady, who was crying really hard. I had never actually seen an adult cry like that and I remember feeling ashamed and guilty, like it was our fault somehow, although we weren’t anywhere nearby at the time. Days later I still tried to avoid looking at the now open gate to her back yard. A few times I saw her coming out to get into her car and lingered at the edge of her driveway; being careful to stand on the small strip of grass that belonged to The Reiman’s so that she couldn’t tell me to get out. Finally one day I blurted out how sorry I was about her dog and then ran away. That was the first and last time ever I spoke to her.

Norma and Joe were in the yellow house next door to Karen. Joe was a route driver for DAN - DEE potato chips and his big yellow truck would be parked in the driveway whenever he was home. Norma had a Southern accent, smoked constantly, and played the racehorses. She also drank like a fish, but we never knew that until much later. Overall, Joe and Norma seemed to have a lot of fun. They would drink a lot of “lemonade”, smoke and tell jokes. Their nieces and nephews would come over and play with us whenever they were around. Their Mother, Sharon, would sit in the house with Norma, smoking and drinking “lemonade”, too. She would come out every now and then to yell and one of the kids and then go back into the house. There was Joey, Lynnie, Tina and Toad. Yeah, Toad! Not Todd, but really and truly Toad. Not spelled or pronounced Todd, but Toad. I tried to call him Todd, my brothers tried to call him Todd. Finally we just didn’t call him anything. I just couldn’t call a kid Toad, even if that was his name. Lynnie was kind of whiny and a little brat, Joey was OK for a boy, but he had a bad temper and would wreck stuff. Tina was little, and Toad, well, he was just Toad.

Usually we played at our house, or outside at Norma’s, but every once in a while we would play inside. Everybody’s house had a room, area, or object that kids couldn’t touch. At our house it was my Dad’s stereo system. At Norma’s house it was her very ornate, doo-dad, curly-queue, porcelain-with-the-gold-trim lamp. Of course, we all knew every house had a room, area or thing not to be touched - and of course that became a kid attention magnet. Now, there was the unwritten, but generally well-understood, time-tested method of handling these kid attention magnets. The first step was to glance at the forbidden room or object from an acceptable distance, for a short period of time. After that was passed through without reproach, the next step was to glance longer, but still at an acceptable distance, say from the next room over. Then came the all out stop and stare. At that point the shrinking distance maneuver was executed until the forbidden object was in close range. Once this was accomplished it was up to the bravest, or the baddest kid to make the next move. In the case of Norma’s very ornate, doo-dad, curly-queue, porcelain-with-the-gold-trim lamp the bravest was me, but the baddest was Joey. Since the bravest was also usually the smartest and the baddest was usually the dumbest, I let Joey take the lead - and, lead he did. His weapons of choice were G.I. Joe soldiers and Hot Wheels cars. The G.I. Joes would poke out from behind the highest porcelain doo-dads, or gold trimmed curly-queue’s while the Hot Wheel’s cars would roam the lamp’s base. Lynnie and I giggled and watched nervously, straining our ears for sounds of Norma. The excitement was delicious, and any sound of creaking floorboards would send us diving into the other room, angelic looks painted on our faces. The game ground to an abrupt halt when Joey carelessly left a Hot Wheels car at the base of the very ornate, doo-dad, curly-queue, porcelain-with-the-gold-trim lamp. The jig was up, Norma’s suspicions were confirmed and we were barred from playing indoor’s! The punishment would have eventually given way, but in the meantime Sharon and her husband divorced. She was over all the time after that. One day Sharon and Norma got into a bad argument. She came running outside and grabbed up all the kids, telling Norma they weren’t ever coming over again. Norma was crying out in the driveway, cigarette in one hand and “lemonade” in the other. All the kids were crying as Sharon stuffed them into the car. Lynnie, Joey, Tina and Toad weren’t around much after that. Soon afterward Joe died of a heart attack. Norma stayed in the house all the time after that. We only saw her at Halloween.

My Aunt Mary and Uncle Pete lived next to Norma. My cousin Paula was a year older than me. I never liked the fact that she had the same name as mine. When she would get mad at me she would say she had the name first. Technically she was right, but I felt I had more rights to it, as she wasn’t named after anyone. Where as, my Father’s Mother was Pauline. I was named after her. Paula had two older sisters, which was another thing I was jealous over. I always wanted a sister, and it didn’t seem fair that she got to have a sister and an extra, when I didn’t even have one. Mark was the only boy. Everyone liked him because he was funny and had big ears.

On the other side of my Aunt Mary’s house lived The Anderson’s. Mr. Anderson was skinny, wore sweaters, and reminded me of Mr. Rogers. Mrs. Anderson was always dressed up and looked like Doris Day. She drank like a fish, too. Even though that was something we didn’t realize at the time, either. We just thought everybody had daily liquor deliveries to their house. The Anderson’s had two daughters, Missy and Amy. Amy was short, chubby and bratty while Missy was tall and thin and gentle. She lived in "an institution" and only came home for visits. We knew Missy was “Mentally Retarded”, but we never made fun of her. She sort of looked different, but she was really nice. Mrs. Anderson was ashamed of her and yelled at her all the time. Amy constantly tattled, cried and carried on over nothing. I really despised her for that, especially when it resulted in Mrs. Anderson bringing Missy in the house as punishment for Amy’s whining. I liked Missy. Mr. Anderson liked Missy, too. I liked Mr. Anderson. Still, even though I felt sorry for him, I didn’t understand why he didn’t stick up for Missy. The Anderson’s used to fight - a lot. I always thought Mr. Anderson and Missy would have made a nice family, while Mrs. Anderson and Amy would have deserved each other. One day there was a broken window in their front door. Then they moved away.

Next door to the Anderson’s lived The Springer’s. The Springer’s had a daughter named Robin. Mr. Springer had a Volkswagen Beetle and played tennis professionally. Mrs. Springer always had a tan, wore a really small bikini, and smoked long thin cigarettes. They had the biggest pool in the neighborhood and a sheep dog named Dexter. They had “art” hanging on their walls. The fact that the drawings were nudes made it the equivalent of pornography to us, which meant you had to look at it from the corner of your eye. They also gave out the best Halloween candy around. Little individual bags! If they hadn’t known us so well, we would have tried for seconds. Years later Mr. Springer left his wife for someone he met in Florida on the Internet.

Next-door to the Springer’s lived Tony-the-dirty-old-man, his wife and son Nicky. They were off-the-boat Italian's. “Mrs. Tony” dressed in black and spoke broken English. Nicky was handsome, nasty to his mother, and always had a different girlfriend just about every week. Tony had a "bad leg" and would sit out on his front porch in a grubby sleeveless white undershirt, yelling out dirty things to the young girls in the neighborhood. If he got you within ear shot he would say things about your underwear and then tell you not to tell your Father. He was lucky I didn’t really give a shit, because if I had told my Father, he would have pounded the crap outta that guy. The only way to evade him was to ride your bike really, really fast past his house, and pretend you couldn’t hear him call. I remember being really glad when I heard the old bastard died.

Next door to the Tony’s was the ugly dark green “Unknown House”. We really didn’t know who lived there, and the house was kind of run down and scary enough to keep us away. We didn’t even like to go there for Halloween. We would eye the candy suspiciously, mentally marking what kind it was. After the haul was completed for the night we would dig through the bag for the offending candy, sniffing and inspecting, debating if it was a good enough candy to brave the possibility of poisoning. We were sure the people who lived there were criminals or something really bad like that.

Next door to the “Unknown House” was the brown house with The Two Fat Brothers. The Two Fat Brothers would take a walk to somewhere around the corner everyday. They were so large and so slow that we could see them walking for quite a distance before they actually came near us. We would spot them walking down the block and linger, waiting for them to come near. As they passed us we'd fall into a stunned silence, watching them until they turned the corner. If we were near bushes or hedges we would crouch down on our bellies and hide. They made great reconnaissance targets. Although we couldn’t prove it, we were sure they were spies of some sort. After the house of The Two Fat Brothers, was the end of the world. Oh, there was a house or two after the Two Fat Brothers, but we didn’t know them and they weren’t interesting enough to extend the limits of our world. So, there it ended.

Eventually we added the Old-Spooky-Mansion-on-the-corner to our world map. The Old Spooky Mansion was huge and had four or five floors and a massive barn-like garage in the back. The house was bought by a crazy Indian guy that worked at Chevy with my dad. The crazy Indian guy’s wife used to leave him all the time, and leave the kids behind, too. There was an older boy named Dale, who was totally gorgeous and had really long shiny straight black hair right down to his ass! He always had a girlfriend. Lots of girlfriends, actually, and always looked stoned. Then there was Cheryl, the older sister, who was my age and really gorgeous, too. All the boys hung around her like bees to honey, and she loved every minute of it. Then there was their little sister, who always looked sad, and wore worn out flowered dresses with no shoes. They only went to school when they wanted to go, and the truant officers used to visit the house all the time. Mr. Crazy Indian was home some of the times that they would come around. One day the truant officer’s pulled up in their big black shiny Cadillac, and two very serious looking men got out of the car. I knew they were important men, because they were wearing hats. They knocked on the side door and went in. I stayed to watch, because, hell, it was the most interesting thing happening at that moment. Besides Mr. Crazy Indian’s house had been quite a scene of interesting events all that week. Mrs. Crazy Indian had shown up one day earlier and taken the sad little sister out of the house by the arm. Mr. Crazy was calling after her and she was trying to stuff Sad Little Sister in the front seat while Cheryl tried to pull her out. A man was behind the wheel of the car and Cheryl said something to Mrs. Crazy about her and that man that made Mrs. Crazy slap Cheryl right across the face! So I was waiting outside when the two important men came running out of the side door with Mr. Crazy waving a bottle of whisky and a shot gun. I heard one of the men tell Mr. Crazy that he was crazy. Well, we all knew that! Mr. Crazy was laughing and weaving around on the porch while the one important man pushed his hat down on his head before getting into the car. He leaned out the window long enough to tell Mr. Crazy that he was going to be in big trouble, and "those kids had better be in school by next week". Later the house looked empty, I think they had moved but I wasn’t sure. My Father said Mr. Crazy lost his job at Chevy and we were not to go around that house anymore. I never did see Cheryl or Dale around the neighborhood again.