Here I sit. A full hour I have been sitting in this chair perusing blogs and Facebook. I should be writing. I shouldn't be popping these mini oreo cookies into my mouth. I should be meeting deadline on a submission. I shouldn't be procrastinating, identifying with others woes. Woe is me and I need to get cracking.
Step Away Magazine (non-paying) is looking for urban flash fiction 1,000 words or less, and poems about neighborhoods. Try stepping back in time, walking down memory lane. Even if you don't write it for publication. My challenge to you is to write something today about your old neighborhood. A sentence or two, trigger a memory and let it flow onto a page.
I remember my grandpa torching a huge pile of leaves at the curb on our city street.
The smoke would curly Q right up to the porch steps where I sat watching the fire blaze and the pile shrivel. The scent of burning leaves, leaves me feeling nostalgic.
When I think of the old neighborhood I have to laugh. My husband and I grew up blocks apart and discovered it after we married and were visiting his aunt. She said, "Do you remember that tightwad Clarence who married Aunt Anna?"
"Wow, my mom had a tightwad Uncle Clarence who married a woman named Anna...no way! Yes, my hubby's great aunt married my great uncle.
WILL YOU SHARE A BRIEF MEMORY WITH ME?
8 comments:
My neighborhood had an IGA and Ben Franklin. Bins of penny candy from the dime store, and grocery store butchers who knew your family and would give you a bone for your dog and make sure the roast for the dinner party was a prime piece of meat.
I had a pair of roller skates...ones with a key that fit over shoes, but our sidewalk was a wreck. I walked across the street and skated on a half block of nice cement walk. Mom said I always had to ask permission of the neighbors though, to skate in front of their house and they were always nice enough to say yes. Imagine anyone today asking permission to use public area near your yard for fear of "bothering" you!
A number of us had ponies and we rode bareback (and barefoot) most summer days. Weekly we jiggled with our collected change trotting our ponies to the country "corner store" and selected three candy bars and a pack of gum. We often headed our ponies towards the quarry, where often we "smoked" a cigarette stollen from my friend's mom's purse) and ambled on towards home via the farmer's cornfields just as dusk was setting. Another favorite was to ride our ponies (some kids had bikes) in the state park and tandem up on our faithful mounts and wade into the river playing "King of the Hill .. or should I say pony?" Can you imagine such freedom for children today? (I am 46 years old... so we are talking about the '70's.) All of this was in about three to four square miles. Quite a territory for kids ranging in age from 10 - 14! Thanks for the trip down memory lane. Now I have to go dig through a pile of stuff as I recently found photos of us "hooligans' :)
I think of how we used to roam the neighborhood. Parents had no clue where we were and as long as we didn't go beyond that area, they didn't care either. Things are so different now for kids...
Pat
Critter Alley
I remember my friends and I playing in a vacant lot we called, "The Jungle." One time we found a rock with mica and thought it was gold. I dragged my Mom down there to see it, thinking we'd surely be rich. Even though we didn't find treasure, we have treasured memories.
What an amazing coincidence about Uncle Clarence and Aunt Anna!
I remember when kids of all ages in my neighborhood used to play Kick the Can until long after dark. One of my favorite memories!
We had eight blocks to roam. Summer found us digging backyard baseball dugouts, making miniature golf courses for marbles and twigs in the dust of a streetside parking spot, daring each other to dip a bare toe onto the lawn of Fanny Hugg, the neighborhood curmudgeon, and biking our fifty-cent allowance to the front-room candy store in Lupkey's house. The highlight of the evening was hearing the Mister Softee truck coming down the road. We played kick-the-can until 9:00, at which time we had to go home and wash our feet and go to bed. Some nights we had friends over, and slept outside on webbed chaise lounges.
Hi Linda...
I remember playing "Red Light" and "Statue" in our front yard. We had so much fun.
Then came the ding-ding-ding of the ice cream truck. Oh, THAT was SO exciting.
If my Dad had money, he'd buy us all an ice-cream, and when he didn't have a dime in his pocket, we were sad. ha ha ha
Thanks for the neighborhood memories. Susan
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