The changes were subtle at first and then it all began to turn. Our neighborhood was changing. People like Mrs. Brunner up the street got divorced. We’d never heard of that. We’d never heard of someone’s parents splitting up. It didn’t happen. Not that we knew anyway. When Mrs. Brunner’s husband left her, we were so shocked, it was the talk of street. But then she took up with some loser and gave her kids away. He said Mrs. Brunner had too many kids. There were many families on our street with four, five or more kids. They all started to get scared that their fathers would leave and their mothers were going to give them away. After all, Mrs. Brunner did. For some guy who ended up dumping her anyway. I wonder if she ever made the effort to get them back. I wonder how those kids felt…
Our families were changing. Kiss and Anda’s brother, Gene, got into a motorcycle accident and it opened up the door of reality for us. He was banged up pretty bad but he survived and that made us realize bad things happen to good people. Our next door neighbor’s husband and son were killed in a car crash one beautiful Sunday afternoon, just after the parish priest had done the annual blessing of the cars. She stopped believing in God and never went back to church. My mother had the first of two breakdowns. Our street was no longer the hermetically sealed, safe place where nothing bad ever happened.
The landscape was changing. Houses were being built in the empty lots we played in, making our play spaces smaller and smaller. They even built a house in that lot next to Jacee’s house, and she no longer had to worry about Wally watching her from his bedroom window. Jacee’s father buried cars in his back yard, after dark. No one knew why and my parents wouldn’t tell me why. None of my business they said. Wally and his friends were forever trying to start up some band or another. It wasn’t so much fun when he and Rusty Kline tried to get together a Country and Western outfit. That’s what they called a band…an outfit. The called themselves “Rusty Kline and the Cheatin’ Hearts.” They practiced in Wally’s garage and thought they were going to be signed up by Nashville any minute.
It’s when Wally, Normie G and his friends jammed on Wally’s front porch, that it was the most fun; they played and sang all evening, sometimes until after midnight. At first, we girls just stood on the sidewalk in front of Wally’s house. After our war, he didn’t want us around. But there we were, and we sang and danced. The sidewalk was free country. Eventually, Wally told us we could join them. We cautiously moved up to the walkway, then the front steps until we were back on our old perches, on the railings of the porch. Nashville didn’t sign up any of them…the guys went to work and the music sessions were few and far between. Came the day when there was no longer any music…
Our bodies were changing. We were plagued with growing pains, the periods from hell with the cramps and, of course, we were such delightful creatures when we had PMS. We were acquiring hips and boobs, cried at nothing and began to see boys in a whole new light. They were either stinking jerks or super dreamy. Then came high school and the whole world we once knew was behind us…
Next -> Heart of Gold
