I just put a post on my FB status about the game: ‘Ghost in the Graveyard.’ It brought back a lot of memories. I remember when we moved to Maryland when I was 7. The house we moved into had been owned by a family with a blind little girl. The floors were hard wood so she could hear people if they came into a room. Mom put down carpet b/c she had four LOUD kids. It was a split level house. When we first looked at the house, there were these really beautiful oriental dolls in show cases in the living room.
Suzy got the room next to Mom and Dad (always – in TN too) and the boys got the room downstairs (always – in TN too). Their bedroom didn’t look like it was originally planned to be a bedroom- more a study but it worked. It was off the den downstairs, which had a sliding glass door to our back porch. I got the bedroom by the stairs with the double bed and new furniture but more often than not, I’d go sleep in the other twin bed in Suzy’s room. She was my big sister and I got scared. I wasn’t allowed to go in Mom and Dad’s room so I’d go to Suzy.
We had a basement where sometimes we’d roller skate. I remember that when you took a bubble bath with too much bubble upstairs, the water would come up bubbling through a drain in the basement. Granddad (Ganger at the time) fussed at me about that one time.
We hadn’t been there two days when the neighborhood kids all came down to our house and rang the doorbell. When Mom answered, all four of us kids were behind her, peering around her back to see who was there. We had a storm door that was the kind with half panel, half plastic window. There were at least 5 kids standing there and I think it was Valerie Ackerson who spoke up and asked Mom if she had any kids who could come out and play.
That was the start of our neighborhood play. All the neighborhood kids got together all the time to play kickball in our backyard b/c it was the best place for it. We'd play football kickback returns in the Dixon's yard and go sledding in the winter in Trin's yard until his neighbor put up a fence. We skateboarded down our street because it was a nice mild, manageable hill that went into a cul-de-sac. Those who had the nerve skateboarded down Bloom or Bloomfield Street (I think I remember the name of that road correctly?). It was a much steeper hill without the cul-de-sac across the road. This was in the 70’s and our skateboarding was not the extreme stuff you see today. It was just balancing on the skateboard and riding down the hill. There were things like catamaran, where two of us would sit down on the skateboard, cross our legs and arms on each other's skateboard and ride down that way. I guess it looked like a catamaran and that's why we called it that.
We did lots of things that kids today want to do but parents won’t let them. We biked in the neighborhood without helmets. I used get up and go biking before I got ready for school sometimes and no one ever knew I was out there or did it. It lessened as I got older and realized mornings….well, mornings take me awhile. My little brother was a daredevil and broke all our bikes jumping ditches. There was a sewer tunnel at the corner of our yard and we thought it was cool to go down in there. It was covered by a grate but we were small enough to squeeze in on either side of the grate and get down in the tunnel.
I remember whenever I got new sneakers; I thought I could run faster than anyone on the planet. I know the truth now – I wasn’t very fast or very athletic at all. But I loved running in my new sneakers. I should have been wearing glasses my whole life and maybe I would have been more of a tomboy if I could have seen better – I guess I was enough though. I was skinny little kid with long blonde hair and I liked to dress up sometimes and sometimes I liked to be grungy. Every little girl is like that.
Our neighbors across the street were Dorothy and Bill Fillman and their two youngest, Roger and Lisa. They were older than my oldest sister, who was 11 when we moved there. I remember that one of the sounds of my childhood was the sound of a chainsaw. Mr. Fillman and Roger cut down trees in the woods behind their house a lot. I loved Mr. Fillman – he was an older Texas man who loved the Cowboys. His family went to our church (Redland Baptist) and they were part of the culture of my life there.
Our church, Redland Baptist was the biggest part of our home life. We were there every time the door was open, literally and sometimes when it was shut, out doing puppets in the parking lot with the big stage set up. My sister and brother worked with the youth there, doing puppets, which was a big deal. They had a big stage with curtains and lots of songs and sketches. They had these puppets like you see on TV. I still remember the songs – especially “I am promise. I am a possibility. I am a promise with a capital P. I am a great big bundle of potentiiiialllityyyy.”
I used the microphone on stage there for the first time, reciting a Bible verse. When they asked me on stage what my favorite part was, I said, “holding the mike.” ! Crazy little girl. I was so confident there at that church. It was a second home.
Our preacher, Bob Rich was a funny man. He would sing “Salty Dog” (I can’t even begin to tell you about that song without thinking of him). I always think of him too when my churches after Maryland sang ‘Rescue the perishing, care for the dying…Jesus is merciful, Jesus will save”. He always sang that with gusto – “REScue the PERishing, CARE for the dying…”
Redland started out in a school gymnasium. It moved to a church building while we lived there. They had a large sanctuary and a small chapel upstairs. I was part of GAs there (Girls in Action, a Southern Baptist girls Bible training and activity group).
I might not have been that confident at school but at church, I was on top of the world in Maryland. I learned so much there. My parents taught Sunday School – 5th grade, which they did for a lot of years wherever we were. Mom led the whole class at the beginning of Sunday school and Dad led the boys when we broke into groups. I memorized Bible verses as a young girl there. I remember one Sunday at the end of the service – I must have been about 8 – I couldn’t stop crying. It hit me that I was not good enough for God and I was heartbroken. Dad kept asking me why I was crying and then he said that no one is good enough for God but He loves us anyway.
Another thing in Maryland that affects me to this day - Billy Graham crusades on TV. My dad would make us watch them whenever they came on and we couldn’t leave or change the channel. To this day, if I happen upon one on TV, even channel surfing by, I can’t go further. I have to watch it.
We’d sit downstairs on the black couch and watch the console TV. That was before remotes and fancy TVs. We didn’t have cable, remotes or exciting stuff like TiVo or even those TV video games back then. We watched what was on TV and if we wanted to change it, someone had to get up and go over there. Bobby and I watched Captain 20, a guy who led kids TV on Saturday morning. We’d watch StarBlazers (anyone out there know if they ever made it to Earth?), the Fantastic Four, Spiderman, Electro woman and DynaGirl (if you ever watched that growing up, you’re now singing the theme song. I know you are…http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eqB36FsglEEhttp://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eqB36FsglEE) and tons more. Seymour the Sea Monster, Marshall, Will and Holly and the Sleestaks on Land of the Lost (http://www.landofthelost.com/theme.htm) and more that I know will come to me later, when I am done probably. The Krofft brothers’ stuff was big. J Kids from C.A.P.E.R.! (Civilian Authority for the Protection of Everybody, Regardless) I just thought of that. The one guy would get freaked out whenever someone said bananas. (Note- I first thought of Niagara Falls and Abbot and Costello. He’d start saying – ‘Niagara Falls. Niagara Falls. Slowly I turned….” http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9pQii1L8fGk&feature=related
Bobby and I would build forts in his and Billy’s bedroom with sheets and play or go outside and play with neighborhood kids. The Kovarciks lived behind us and Kevin Kovarcik was Bobby’s age. Stephanie Kovarcik was a toddler and I liked to watch over her.
Our backyard was great for kickball and lots of us neighborhood kids would gather to play there. We broke the basement window that was at ground level umpteen times, until Dad bricked it in, in frustrated capitulation.
We had a dog, Sean for a short time. He was a black lab that we got from a neighbor as a puppy. He was beautiful but I have to admit with my fear of dogs as a child, I was a little afraid of him but not so that I didn’t love him and wouldn’t play with him. I just played gingerly with him. He died after a not very long life – he was poisoned. He was mostly an outside dog and the family urban myth is that he was poisoned by neighbors behind us (the Koontzes) who didn’t like his barking. I don’t know if that’s true. I do know the vet said he was poisoned. Mamaw was there and I can still her balling up her fists and pretending to hit someone for us.
I went to Belmont Elementary School there and Suzy and Bill went to Farquhar Junior High for a little bit. Suzy had problems with some obnoxious mean girls and Mom went down there and moved her to another school. The teachers told Mom that she couldn’t. They didn’t know her very well. She told them that she was going to anyway and she did. Mom fought for her kids. She was a bear if you messed with us. I remember her hollering at the bus every morning b/c we were never out there on time – we called our bus driver Bozo, b/c she wore a ton of makeup. Mom never hollered that though!
Bobby was too young when we first moved there but he did go to kindergarten and first grade there, I think. Maybe part of second grade. Belmont was fun. My best friends were Christine Sullivan and Monica Lemon. I had a friend named Patrick O’Sullivan. My first boyfriend, Benjy Geber was there.
I played field hockey in the gym in the mornings before school. I learned the multiplication tables and how to write there – no idea why that sticks out in my mind. We had to learn poetry and I still remember: (Mrs. Lese would be so pleased).
“I have a little shadow who goes in and out with me
And what can be the use of him is more that I can see
He’s very very like me from my feet up to my head
And I see him jump before me when I jump into my bed.
Sometimes he grows up tall, like an India rubber ball
And sometimes he’s so tiny that there’s none of him at all”
Anyway, I have rambled but it was nice to go down memory lane for awhile. I know I may not have remembered everything exactly right but it’s my memory and that’s what I remember.
It is fun to look back sometimes to see where you’ve been. Some memories we want to forget (I know I have mine) but there are some that are just good times. I remember with rose colored glasses sometimes but that’s ok. I’m sure my brothers and sister and parents have their own memories of what happened in our lives back then and those may or may not match mine exactly. S’ok.
If they want to share – they can certainly do that here in a comment. Except Bobby who boycotts FB.
Memory lane…..if you have read to here, you have walked down it with me. Thanks for the company on the walk.
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