Childhood Friends & Neighborhoods

Where I was born & grew up was seemingly an amazing place. At least to me it was. I have gotten in contact with kids from my old neighborhood and most of us agree that it was a really idyllic place to have been a kid in th 70's & 80's. To me Connecticut was great. My house sat on over an acre & a half of property, I had a big inground pool and a lot of the neighborhood kids would be over every hot day swimming all day long. We'd build forts in the small patch of woods across the street (which are still there by the way because it's too hilly & rocky to build a house on thankfully!) that has a small brook running through it. There were trails all through the trees to each others houses we used as shortcuts to get home before dusk as the streetlights were coming on. Our front yards were used to play tag or kickball, we'd play red light/green light & Mother May I in the street because few cars zinged by at harrowing speeds since everyone had a younger sibling or child out their playing and knew to watch for them! The tinkling toll of the ice cream man & the resultant exuberant cries of the kids yelling for change from their parents could be heard throughought the encircling streets. We'd all trek up to the Jonses' chrismas tree farm or ride over to the Bronson country to go sledding during the winter and build snow forts in our back yards or on either side of the streets epending on which way the plows pushed the snow for endless rounds of snowball fights. We all rode the bus to school so we'd stand together at the corner waiting for it to arrive & if it was raining, the neighbor would open their garage door so we could wait out of the rain for the bus without fear of being snatched into some stranger's house. Everyone knew everybody and you waved to everyone sitting on the stoop of their homes as you rode your bike to your friend's house for a game of kick-the can or to spend the day scavenging through the woods playing manhunt. At dusk everyone would catch fireflies or through acorns up in the air to watch the bats swoop down towards them. Come the fall kids would spend hours over at their friends houses raking up leaves& jumping into the piles & throwing nature's colorful confetti into the air until you heard your arent's call for you to come in for dinner. You played outside all day or in cool basements on hot days. But you played! None of this couch potato stuff. Halloween in CT is like a right of passage! EVEERYONE would get into it in our neighborhood and kids looked forward to that special night as soon as the calender showed October 1st. Immense planning went into the originality of homemade costumes as well as warmth. Remember, CT could be a little chilly sometimes during late October evenings. It would get dark early up there as well. Unless it was the summer months, it was usually dark come 6:30/7pm at night. So kids were inside and dinner was being cleaned up, homework was being completed, and kids were actually unwinding from the day and getting ready for bed or for quiet time or were just plain exhausted from being outside all day! Spring cleaning was a family event. Mom would air out & clean the house & the kids would help dad with the yard whether we wanted to or not! None of this whining about not wanting to do it, you did as you were told! If you wanted to use the pool come the summer, then you helped with everything to get ready for the summer, same thing with the fall prep for the winter! Nobody got out of chores! The lawn was mowed every week, grass clippings were raked up & bagged and the pool was skimmed and the filter was "bumped" (you had to be there to appreciate getting stuck with that chore), we didn't have a pool service come & do it for us! The dogs were brushed to help keep the hair to a minimum in the house, atorm windows taken down, screens put up and everything reversed come the fall! Mom & I would go strawberry or blueberry picking and you'd come home with your fingers stained red or blue but you had fun and you always looked forward to going becuse you could snack as you went along! Most of the original families have moved out of my old neighborhood, there are one or two parents (now grandpaernts!) still left there and even some of my oldchild hood friends are still there, having inherited the house that their parents owned, but so much of my old town has changed. Many of the rolling pasture fields are gone, bulldozed under to make way for new communities with zero lot lines but my old house is still there. It's just a different color now. A tree we planted towers over many others in the yard, and the graves of my beloved childhood pets are still intact, having been spared being dug up since they were buried near trees in the backyard. I look at satellite photos of my old hometown & wax nostalgic about it. FLorida is nice but I really miss CT. It's so expensive up there now though that it would be hard to go back, but maybe one day. I always have my memories though.