Earl and Don used to ride bikes with me. We were 8. Trent went to school with me and lived in a trailer park. Jeff L. lived down the street and I would go home with him for lunch. Joey would play kickball with me.
At age ten I was hanging around with Kevin and Kyle. They we brothers. Richard lived across the street from them and Jannell a few houses down with her brother Raymond. Greg lived next door and Sheri across the park. Tommy, Mary and Maryann lived a couple blocks away with Mike, Greg and Liz on the same block. Jeff, Karen, Carrie and Susan lived a block over. Another block over was Walter, Scott and Susie. Susie and I got caught kissing in the garage and she disappeared from school. I think they shipped her off to boarding school. George, Jerry and Greg lived on the next block.
The next block didn't have a single kid on it, but it did have Rose's Market. A corner store that ran a bookmaking operation out of the back. It hit the papers on occasion and it's where I got my first beer.
The block after that had Brenda, Irene and Dorothy.
That was my whole neighborhood. These are the kids I grew up near. I've lost touch with all of them. I've seen a few of them over the years, but we had grown so far apart that we didn't reconnect.
Tommy and Mary live just down the street from me...with their mother...at age 54 (them, the mom is in her 70s)! I heard Maryann is doing well. Scott lives in his grandmother's old house. Susie's been married a couple times and has a few kids. Jeff L. went on to be valedictorian at Stanford. The other Jeff served a hitch in the state pen. Liz, who was always kinda strange, finally figured out she was gay and became a little more normal. I heard Don served a hitch in the pen too.
I would look them up, but I don't even remember their last names in most cases. Odd how the memory fades.
I'm only in touch with Mark, of whom I wrote earlier.
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