On the Street Where I Lived

This is the street I grew up on in Painesville Township, Ohio. I'm guessing the road is three miles long from Route 20 to Madison Avenue. I recently had the opportunity to visit my sister who lives in the area and we drove around finding remnants of my youth.

Here is the house about a half mile from Route 20 on Bowhall Road that I grew up in.

The house is painted now. It was plain weathered boards as I remember. One beautiful catalpa and one flowing mulberry tree have been removed from the side yard and the blackberry bushes removed from the other side. Huge eight foot white spirea bushes as well have been dug out and taken away.

The front porch has been enclosed. It used to have a swing on it and front steps that were shaky and held one only if one trod carefully up, or down, one side of the steps. If you look closely you can see the coal chute leading into the basement. Once you've heard the sound of coal being funneled into your basement, it's a sound you can still hear in your ear's memories.

One thing remains the same. The dirt driveway has the same ruts in it that it did so many decades ago, still catching the rain and making puddles to delight the young at heart.

Thanks to modern health regulations I imagine the house now has indoor plumbing and hot and cold running water.

Regularly, trains ran on a track only six houses from ours. Loose window panes gently rattled as trains regularly ran. As kids, we would put pennies on the tracks because we had been told that a penny on a track could derail a train. It never happened, thank goodness, and we had no thoughts about the consequences of our little experiment had it worked.

Beside the track, around some neighborhood houses, was what we called the gravel pit. At the time it was a steep descent into a flat dirt bottom that abutted the tracks. From the gravel pit we could see no houses and could hear nothing of the real world. When a train was heard coming down the track we scrambled to the top of the steep dirt cliff to get out of the way. Of what, we were not sure.

Today the gravel pit has been filled in. When my sister and I drove by the steep dirt cliff was no higher than ten grassy feet, sloping gentle to a grassy plain. Major disappointment.

Across a side street from our house was a cement block garage that my dad and his brother built. It, along with everything I saw that day, is much smaller than I remember.

For six years I went to this school. The flagpole you see in the front became the May Pole every Spring. I remember that only sixth graders could dance the May Pole dance which I did as a sixth grader. Pastel dresses were a must and mine was a pink organza one with tiny white dots. Dancing a May Pole dance requires weaving the streamers in and out until braided ribbons cover the pole. On one pass, I lost my white flat shoe. On the way back around I stepped into it and kept on dancing. Story of my life.

My memories of grade school are very positive. Spelling bee success, vocal music success, winning at jacks during recess, these were good years.  I remember one huge frustration, attempting to make a paper mache giraffe. The paper kept breaking apart. I never finished that project and have stayed away from major art projects since.

There was one not-so-positive time, though, when I got into a fight with another girl on the playground and we both ended up in the Principal's office. He said that if we didn't straighten up and become friends...yes, he said that...he would make us stand in front of the whole school with our arms around each other. With that hanging over us, we became good friends.

Funny what one remembers.  And that's what I think about it.