Strange to write a letter to a road isn't it? But when I start to go down memory lane (excuse the pun) I can't help but think of you.
At one end is the bus stop, near enough to our home that on a cold winter morning, we could wait inside our kitchen door until we saw the bus pulling up to the neighbor's carport. (It also helped that we knew the bus driver, Mrs. Sponsler, a friend of the family's. If we weren't waiting outside, she would actually honk the horn and wait for a few minutes. ) At the other end (okay, not really the end, but as far as I was allowed to go in my elementary and middle school years) was Sam Jones' house. In between those two points was my world.
Winding around the first corner, on my lime green banana seat bike, there was McLain's, the best place in the whole neighborhood to go sledding. They had a fabulous hill in their front yard. We would spend hours torpedoing down the icy slopes and trudging back up again. And when our limbs were frozen solid, we would shiver our way into the house, warm our hands by the big fireplace and sip delicious hot chocolate.
Next was Stoners'. They had a pool, an irish setter, a doctor for a dad, and a teeny tiny grandma named "mimi". We played lots of cards, and spent hours playing board games like Life and Risk. I remember listening to album after album of Jim Croce and Cheech and Chong. (I'm sure there were others too....) And in their basement (which was very cool because our old house didn't have a basement!) was where I learned my infamous ping pong serve.
On the other side of you, (You thought I forgot that I was talking to a road, didn't you?!) there were the Staz's and the Stevens. My first babysitting jobs were with those families- It all seems like it was just yesterday, but those babies already have babies... Where does the time go?
But the best place of all, at the end of you, road, was Jones' farm....
And that is a story for another post.
L
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