Ode to Pine Street

I like an old neighborhood.
Its long and narrow sidewalks. Its trees and porches.

In an old neighborhood, you walk down a path to pick up the newspaper.
Mailboxes are in the door.

In an old neighborhood, you wave to people who live across the street.
You walk around the block.

An old neighborhood is a good place to live.
Pine Street is one.

On Pine Street, the steeple of St. Boniface casts a shadow.
The Church bells ring at noon.
The sound of the marching band filters through the air from St. Catherine's Military School.
Taps is played at sun down.

Kids play hopskotch, ride big wheels, and skateboards on uneven sidewalks.

The street sweeper is a common enemy. With few driveways, the neighbors on Pine Street become acquainted in robes and curlers as they dash to move the cars out of the way of the city's monster machine with its roaring engine.

On Pine Street, there are people who've lived there a long time
and remember when.

There are young families with new babies. Toddlers who are told not to run in the street.

There are roof lines and people choose the color of their stucco or wood framed houses.

There are front yards with grass and shrubs and Magnolia trees and Lilies of the Nile that bloom once a year.

People come and go.
Wave and walk.
Skip and run.

People grow up, grow old, get sick and die.

I prefer a neighborhood like Pine Street to a planned development or a gated community.
I prefer weeds in the yard to perfectly manicured beds with automatic sprinklers.
I prefer grit .
I prefer a lawn mower pushed by short-clad dads on Saturday morning to a blower wielded by hired hands.

I like the sound of children playing and babies crying.

Pine Street.
A Street to grow up on. I'm glad my kids did.
Pine Street.
A neighborhood to live in. I'm glad we did.
Pine Street.
For twenty years we called it home.

Anaheim Born and Razed

Small town memories stir each daylight savings. When darkness falls at five, I am again, Anaheim's child waiting anxiously for my turn to walk amidst cheering crowds down Center Street on Halloween. The Kiddie Parade! I remember the year I was a gypsy. I remember the year I was chosen to hold one end of the banner proudly displaying my school's name, St. Boniface.
You could taste the holiday spirit in the air. A carnival atmosphere in a city with a down town. Local shopkeeper festively decorated their windows with bright orange pumpkins and spooky goblins. Banks transformed into haunted houses and fully costumed tellers distributed candy to children making the rounds - marching between home grown businesses like Mitchell's Gift Store, Weisser's Sporting Goods, Hurst Jewelers, Jackson Drug's, Leo's Coffee Shop and the SQR Store.

I didn't know it at the time, but my childhood may have been among the last whose memories include the Kiddie Parade, the SQR Store and a down town Anaheim. You see, I'm Anaheim - born and raised. I made my debut on February 10th, 1959 in Anaheim Memorial Hospital at about nine o'clock at night. I grew up right over on Resh Place, beneath the steeple of St. Boniface Church. Harbor Boulevard to the east, Citron Street to the west, Wilhelmina to the north and St. Catherine's Military School boardering the south. I grew up going to Elvis Presley movies at the Fox Anaheim. Stopped at Center Drug first to buy a nickel's worth of candy to eat while sitting in the front row watching "Girl Crazy" and "Speedway."
Mother bought my saddle shoes from George in the shoe department at the SQR.

I'm fifty now and so are my classmates of '73 from St. Boniface School. A school that no longer exists. I left Anaheim to go to college, I got married and moved back home to raise my children in a city with no down town.

My kids never got to march down Center Street in the Kiddie Parade on Halloween. Robbed of that magic in the name of progress, my kids never had the chance to stand fascinated at the counter of the SQR as the sales slip was tucked into a tube and sent through exposed brass pipes up to the mezzanine. They never knew the little old lady with the thin red hair who cranked the elevator up to that mezzanine where she also wrapped the presents.Their memories do not include the pungent odor of shoe polish at Hoffman's nor the deer antlers that hung from its walls over the shoe-shine stands.
No. Those memories went out with the wrecking ball. As daylight savings descends - buried in the rubble - childhood dreams, a small town spirit, the Kiddie Parade and down town Anaheim.