Nostalgia
This is a story about a little dirt road also known as the place where I grew up.
We lived off the beaten path, up a hill with only 6 other houses. The order of inhabitants, going up the drive:
# 1 was the home of a single man whom I don't ever recall seeing. My mother always said he was a very nice man and I kind of remember her talking to him a few times as we ventured down the hill to collect our mail. I would not be able to pick him out of a line-up though, and I don't know his name either.
#2 was that of married doctors with no children. Before them, a man named Henry lived there. That house overlooked the lake and for some reason I feel that Henry drowned in that lake while drunk. I don't know if that is true. It was a very, very nice house and I used to pick weeds there during the summer to make a little money. In the winter, we would sneak through the doctors' yard (when Henry lived there we could do whatever we liked) to get to the lake and go ice skating. Before them, my family used to have great parties down by the lake, roasting marshmallows, kegs of beer, sleigh-riding, snowshoeing, building igloos. Those are some of my fondest memories. My father was a very social man, and he would plow the dirt drive during the winter months, collecting $20 from each house on the street. One thing I will never forget about those doctors is this: during one of my father's collections, he was chatting with them. The were Asian, Chinese I think, and they told him about a belief that each of us is encapsulated in a bubble. If you hurt yourself badly somehow, you burst that protective bubble. I know I'm missing it completely, but years later, my father who was a heavy equipment operator, caught the blade of his backhoe on something, causing him to bump his stomach very hard into the steering equipment. It was so jarring, he felt out of the machine. After the fact, told me that he believed that that was the moment that his bubble burst, causing the pancreatic cancer that would eventually take his life.
#3 was the house of a single mom and her two kids. Their father was a drug addict that we never saw or heard much about. I babysat for the kids a lot. They weren't allowed sugar so sometimes the boy would want to have some of the treats that we were having, but unfortunately my mom wouldn't give it to him unless his mother said it was okay. Later on, his mother married a new man, and the son started getting into trouble. He ended up robbing my house and stealing my father's guns. That was devastating since my family was very close to him and always looked out for, and liked him. He was caught and my father got his guns back, but I have no idea what happened to him after that.
#4 was the home of another married couple who later in life adopted two teenaged children. I don't remember much about them except that they had a Jesus sticker on their car and when they had parties, their really crazy brother-in-law would be there and we just LOVED playing with him b/c he was super-rough (too rough, looking back) and for some reason we all wanted his attention. Kind of perverse now that I think about it.
#5 was our house, and now my brother lives there with his family.
#6 housed the dad that liked to dress up in Civil War gear and shoot blanks on specific days, while drinking a jar of pickle juice. They had one kid who I tried to befriend before she bit me so hard I ran home crying. My father told me to bite her back, so I went and waited for the perfect opportunity to do so. I was trying very hard to get up close to her and bite her back, but it was too hard so I just went home.
and lastly, was #7 which was the home of my best friend for a while before she moved away. Then a new family moved in and they were all very nice. The kids were hugely popular in school, they had a pool and the house was the biggest on the hill. I spent a lot of time there when I was younger, and then when they moved in, sometimes my sister would watch their dog.
That little drive has so many stories, and is an integral location in my life. It's amazing that the same home that I grew up in is where I go back to spend holidays. That my neice and nephew will run along the same street, up the same hills, as we did. And end up with just as many stories of their own, about all the new neighbors. They'll play on Big Rock and Pine Tree Fort and fish in Lake Winnipee and Lake Mombasha. I loved where I grew up, now more than I realized then, and I bet they will too.
We lived off the beaten path, up a hill with only 6 other houses. The order of inhabitants, going up the drive:
# 1 was the home of a single man whom I don't ever recall seeing. My mother always said he was a very nice man and I kind of remember her talking to him a few times as we ventured down the hill to collect our mail. I would not be able to pick him out of a line-up though, and I don't know his name either.
#2 was that of married doctors with no children. Before them, a man named Henry lived there. That house overlooked the lake and for some reason I feel that Henry drowned in that lake while drunk. I don't know if that is true. It was a very, very nice house and I used to pick weeds there during the summer to make a little money. In the winter, we would sneak through the doctors' yard (when Henry lived there we could do whatever we liked) to get to the lake and go ice skating. Before them, my family used to have great parties down by the lake, roasting marshmallows, kegs of beer, sleigh-riding, snowshoeing, building igloos. Those are some of my fondest memories. My father was a very social man, and he would plow the dirt drive during the winter months, collecting $20 from each house on the street. One thing I will never forget about those doctors is this: during one of my father's collections, he was chatting with them. The were Asian, Chinese I think, and they told him about a belief that each of us is encapsulated in a bubble. If you hurt yourself badly somehow, you burst that protective bubble. I know I'm missing it completely, but years later, my father who was a heavy equipment operator, caught the blade of his backhoe on something, causing him to bump his stomach very hard into the steering equipment. It was so jarring, he felt out of the machine. After the fact, told me that he believed that that was the moment that his bubble burst, causing the pancreatic cancer that would eventually take his life.
#3 was the house of a single mom and her two kids. Their father was a drug addict that we never saw or heard much about. I babysat for the kids a lot. They weren't allowed sugar so sometimes the boy would want to have some of the treats that we were having, but unfortunately my mom wouldn't give it to him unless his mother said it was okay. Later on, his mother married a new man, and the son started getting into trouble. He ended up robbing my house and stealing my father's guns. That was devastating since my family was very close to him and always looked out for, and liked him. He was caught and my father got his guns back, but I have no idea what happened to him after that.
#4 was the home of another married couple who later in life adopted two teenaged children. I don't remember much about them except that they had a Jesus sticker on their car and when they had parties, their really crazy brother-in-law would be there and we just LOVED playing with him b/c he was super-rough (too rough, looking back) and for some reason we all wanted his attention. Kind of perverse now that I think about it.
#5 was our house, and now my brother lives there with his family.
#6 housed the dad that liked to dress up in Civil War gear and shoot blanks on specific days, while drinking a jar of pickle juice. They had one kid who I tried to befriend before she bit me so hard I ran home crying. My father told me to bite her back, so I went and waited for the perfect opportunity to do so. I was trying very hard to get up close to her and bite her back, but it was too hard so I just went home.
and lastly, was #7 which was the home of my best friend for a while before she moved away. Then a new family moved in and they were all very nice. The kids were hugely popular in school, they had a pool and the house was the biggest on the hill. I spent a lot of time there when I was younger, and then when they moved in, sometimes my sister would watch their dog.
That little drive has so many stories, and is an integral location in my life. It's amazing that the same home that I grew up in is where I go back to spend holidays. That my neice and nephew will run along the same street, up the same hills, as we did. And end up with just as many stories of their own, about all the new neighbors. They'll play on Big Rock and Pine Tree Fort and fish in Lake Winnipee and Lake Mombasha. I loved where I grew up, now more than I realized then, and I bet they will too.
posted by Tracy at 9:23 AM
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