growing up. or not.

I suppose I've been moony about the bullet-train passage of these wonderful summer days in part because of my current reading material.

Recently, Mom gave me a copy of Bill Bryson's "The Life and Times of the Thunderbolt Kid" -- his memoir about growing up in Des Moines in the late 1950s. Bryson's laugh-out-loud reminiscences about kidhood really resonate with me; it strikes me that the difference between my growing-up in the 1970s and his in the '50s is much narrower than the difference between my childhood and today's kids'.

The book, plus these late-spring days (today is picture-perfect) have got me thinking a ton about growing up on Coventry Way, and about all the experiences that made up my childhood. Especially, all of our outdoor summer activities in the neighborhood. Which, frankly, I'd just as soon be doing still.

So let me paint a picture:

When we moved into our house at 3754 Coventry Way in, I think it was 1972, the street was still under construction. Most of the houses on our west side of the street were finished or nearly so; across the street there were several vacant lots and half-built houses that offered tempting play options, provided we could sneak over there without our moms knowing we were messing around on a potentially hazardous construction site. Most likely, someone stepped on a nail, and that was the end of our navigating shaky stairways and exploring open basements.

Our house had the first flat backyard at the crest of a hill. To our north lived the Hugheys (my classmate Debbie and her younger twin brothers). Beyond them on the cul-de-sac were the Webers, Todd, who was a year younger than me, and Tammy, who was Bill's age. I thought the Webers were a bit odd. Todd and Tammy were allowed to watch cartoons after school, which wasn't an option in our house. And Mrs. Weber made the WORST PB&J sandwiches: Jif peanut butter (we were a Peter Pan family) and Welch's grape jelly on Wonder bread. They were mushy and I thought they tasted sort of low-budget.

From our house going south down the street, you'd run next into the Chris Crowder's yard. Then on downhill to the McEneany's house, clad in blue siding. Tricia McEneany was a year or two older than me, and she was the first kid I knew to have her own record player in her bedroom, upon which we spun the Bay City Rollers' "Saturday Night" until the needle broke. "S-A-TUR-DAY NIGHT!" The McEneany's lived there when we moved in, but the dad was transferred and the family moved away a year or two later. Then in moved the Joneses, with daughter Erin who was Bill's age.

Chris Crowder and Erin Jones were the only only children on the street; we thought either their parents couldn't have any more kids or, after Chris and Erin, didn't want to.

Next down the hill were the Grimms. Kirsten Grimm remains my oldest friend, and we're in fairly regular touch both in person and via email. Her brother, Adam, was the youngest kid on the block, and we hazed him for it. In addition to having a finished basement (including a very exotic-seeming wet bar and a square of linoleum tile that became the defacto dance floor), Grimms' house had a root cellar, which was accessible by a huge door on the back of the house. It was a sort of appealing and yet scary place, and it smelled damp and earthy and dark. I don't recall what was stored there; we'd open the door and go in for a few minutes before getting a bit creeped out and running back out into the yard.

Then came Eric Stevens's house. The Stevenses were by far the richest family on the street, as evidenced by a) the deep-pile white shag carpet in their sunken living room; b) the fact that they gave out full-size Hershey bars at Halloween; and c) the fact that they were probably the first family in the neighborhood to have cable, and most definitely the first to have HBO. I caught more than an eyeful of some R-rated movies (most memorably a bizarre scene from "Last Tango in Paris" that I still can't quite get past) late-night when I was babysitting Eric.

From our house down to the Stevenses', our backyards all connected in this sloping stripe of green playspace, edged all along the west side by a deep and wonderful woods.

About which I'll post more soon.