SOUNDS OF SUMMER’S PAST

Back in the late 1940’s, I was just a kid in blue jeans and high tops with a t-shirt. No one had air conditioning, and the windows were open all over the neighborhood. You could both hear and smell the food being cooked.

As a child, I could walk around the neighborhood. Usually on a summer afternoon, perhaps an hour or two before dinner, I would go to a neighbor’s house. I did not know them as we lived in the city. So when the home maker came to the door, “I would tell them where I lived and that I just stopped by to say “hello.” It worked every time. I was generally invited into the living room and I said something nice about a piece of furniture. Then I told them about my family and then came the “killer.” They could see that I wasn’t trying to sell them something and I was really short and kind of cute. I was well behaved.

Would you like some ice-cream? I said that ice ceam was my favorite food. That did it. Out came the ice-cream and in a bowl with spoon and chocolate syrup. If they had a dog, I would instantly became their friend.

In my neighborhood, all the houses were older, but well maintained. There were a few that I knew and went into their houses. However, the rest of the neighborhood was houses that I walked by or was driven by.

In later years, thanks to a computer realtor company I was able to see in other houses. Our favorite neighbors were the Babcocks. One extended family lived beside us and another lived behind us. On Sunday night, Grandma Babcock had dinner for all the family. Just down the alley was another Babcock family, and I was invited.

Houses were set close together, and when I go to sleep our current neighborhood becomes my old neighborhood and in my dreams just outside the window is the old neighborhood.

For me, the biggest mystery was the sound of the trumpet. Someone in the neighborhood practiced trumpet. I imagined that this person played in a local band, and to this day I don’t know who that person was. I thought that it was a guy and that he lived by himself. I thought that maybe playing trumpet as a second job.

Well that mystery disappeared because after 1957, Rose Hill Elementary “lost” their 7^th and 8^th grade.. My class went to Monroe Jr. High and then Benson. I hated it. It was not the teachers, it was the impersonality of going to these huge monstrous schools with gray and green inside. There were continous fist fights after school and that was that. I stayed within my books

All the special things mentioned above changed for the worse except perhaps the air conditioning. The trumpet man remained my mystery. I have moved 15 times since and lived in three states. I don’t neighbor anymore. I do wave to the folks across the street.

joelsnell@hotmail.com/