Monday’s Blog: Road Home

The mind is a powerful thing, often beyond our control or understanding. Suddenly, an image flashed into my mind taking me back to my high school days in the late 1950s. The trigger leading to this image must have stemmed from the shadowy recesses of memory; the day was sunny, the fall leaves in their full glory before they cascaded to the ground and before the inevitable calluses of hand raking the leaves into piles at the curb.  

My house was too close to the school to be eligible for the school bus. I have no regrets about having to walk. Even then I held the camaraderie of walking home with friends and the joy of exercise a decided benefit over the travails of the rumored school bus experience.  I had to endure some teasing upon leaving the school through the back door short cut (past the smokers and testosterone-laden boys) lighting up on the slab waiting for vulnerable teen girls trying to avoid their nasty glances. 

The walk home took about 20 minutes if taken at a directed fast pace without stops and starts such as a stop at Don and Bob’s restaurant for chips and gravy (served in a boat shaped paper dish,) not the rolled cone of newspaper that I enjoyed while visiting my mother’s family in Hamilton, Ontario or walking and talking to best friends Ellie or Marjorie  en-route, bidding them goodbye as we reached their streets before I reached mine.  

The crossing guard, there during my 5 years at Brighton HS stopped traffic at the busy intersection (1950’s traffic mind you) became our friend. She was short and dark haired like me, friendly and not very much older. We know she had two young children and lived on the block where we crossed. Her husband worked at Kodak, not a rarity for Rochester. Sometimes John, (a neighbor on my street) accompanied me home. After the fear of the teasing boys, the smells of the restaurant, the street crossing, the intense conversation with friends, it was quieting to reach the corner of Sunset Dr and the gentle downhill grade to my house. John was in my Spanish Advanced placement conversation class. I called him Juan, he called me Anna. We practiced our Spanish as we walked and were proud of our fluency. Both of us dreamed of visiting Spanish speaking countries and immersing our selves in this beautiful language. 

The houses on Sunset Dr were a mix of style, very blue and white collar middle class. Some stand out in my memory–at the top of the street a seemingly large, tired looking two story house boasting aging Greek-style columns stood close to the street. I did not know the occupants. Across the way stood the small, dark brown, mysterious and non descript one story house that never seemed to change. I don’t recall any of the inhabitants being outside, a small dark brown car came and went but otherwise there was no activity during the times I walked to or from school. Next to them was an active family, the Smileys, with 3-4 under-10 children living in a bright white house with a screened front porch.  We maintained a waving hello relationship and I gave them some of my hand me downs through the years.

John’s house was across the street. He lived with his parents and younger sister in a beige two story rectangular house with a windowed enclosed front porch.  We bid each other Adios as I continued alone to the end of the street and my house. Other houses of memory were square colonials like mine and a two story gray house housing families that were my regular baby sitting “clients;” even then a lucrative enterprise even at 50 cents an hour. 

The Goldstein’s lived across the street in a charcoal toned house with a porch but deeply recessed into the lot with bushy trees across the front. My brother had dated the woman of the house years before. Our western neighbor, Leila Mason, was a thin and seemingly frail widow and quite elderly (in my eyes but most likely in her early 60’s.)  She was an active and inveterate gardener and always astonished me in how long she could weed and dig in a deep squatting position without any sign of physical discomfort or strain. She and my mother visited each other often for coffee and chat.

Our easterly neighbors were friendly and a bit seclusive. The brother and sister were close to my age but we mostly greeted each other not having much in common I guess. The son’s friends played basketball in a hoop hung over the separate, backyard garage that reflected the style of the street and of the era.  The parents were of interest in that the mom was one of the ugliest woman I remember having seen and the dad, a very handsome dark haired man. The children resembled their respective parents. 

My Brother Arthur on leave from his Army duties photographed on Sunset Drive backyard overlooking the eastern neighbors’ back porch

On better weather days I would drop my books on our front stoop and wander to the very end of the street. The first 2 years this was swamp land, the remains of the old trolley bed. With my trusty eye dropper, I would gather water samples from the puddles to investigate under my beloved microscope, reveling in the exposed amoeba and one celled critters living in the drops. That joy was erased in the construction of the expressway that I drive today when in town. 

What wonderful memories are inspired by my road home and the saga of neighbors’ lives, neighbors’ pets, life cycle events, folks moving in and out and my life as a typical teenager, courted by my beloved bike riding future husband.  Visiting the street recently, the trees loom large, the houses loom smaller than in my imagination but my memories are vivid and alive.