Thursday, August 27, 2009

Grasping at Dreams


All of my young adult life I was looking for the neighborhood that I grew up in. The perfect place to raise my son. Nice neighbors. Peace and quiet. Decent homes. Kids playing safely. Local drugstore with a soda jerk on the job, comic books on the shelf. Hobby shop down the block. Trees.

Occasionally I'd find such a neighborhood. You had to make six figures per year to live in them. The cops would spy me checking the place out and follow me until I left.

Alas.

The '60s of my childhood. Gone, Daddy-O!

4 comments:

  1. LOVE IT!

    Actually the community you describe is a little place called Burgaw, NC. It even has a courthouse square with a little gazebo that kids all gather at for pictures at prom and graduation. Across the street is Dee's Drugs complete with a soda fountain.

    And, amazingly, it is affordable and located easy driving distance from Wilmington, a decent size city to have a "real job" in.

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  2. Around here,such places were always far out of my capacity to afford.

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  3. That house in the above photograph is a lot like the one I envisioned in Natalia, Kansas, in my book BLEEDING KANSAS. The distinguishing feature of the place for me, as with the neighborhood, was the superabundance of trees. Something I picked up early on is the peasants bake in the open sun, but it's always cool and green where the old money lives.

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  4. And the cops are always active. And they can tell when you "don't belong" there.

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