When I was 5, my sisters married me to Doug McDowell — two doors down. It was a big deal: they curled my hair like Shirley temple, and dressed me in one of my sisters’ dresses, so it would reach the floor. After the elaborate backyard ceremony, Doug and I planned that he would live on top of the upright piano at our house, and I would bring him oreos. We figured no one would ever be able to see him there because it was so high up.
Of course, I didn’t grow up on Edgewood road exactly — I was around the corner on Barry Road — but I spent an awful lot of time on Edgewood. And it was all such a unique neighborhood; I think the ratio of kids to parents had to be at least 3:1. I know that on my street alone, there were 50+ kids between the age of 5 and 12. So we not only ruled the road, we ruled the world. Endless games of box ball and kick-the-can, monkey-in-the-middle and tennis (or some bastardized version thereof) would only break when a car crept near, and even then, the car was always at the mercy of our schedule. I would’ve been terrified to be an adult driving in that area.
We all walked to school back then. Our crossing guard — where Edgewood and Nelson roads intersected, at the corner of the Edgewood elementary school — was Miss Francis, I think. Chris, as I remember it, you and I loved her. I don’t know why. And we took it upon ourselves to make her an Easter basket filled with toys and candy. I specifically remember that we included a white chocolate bunny. I had never seen white chocolate before, and I really WANTED that bunny; it was tough to give it up. I remember meeting you that morning, all excited about what we were about to do, and ceremoniously presenting it to her. I wonder how many kids got hit by cars during the exchange…..
Funny how we lived diagonally across the street from each other and couldn’t have had more opposite upbringings! Ha! No one ever called me in for dinner or to go to bed, we were left feral to prowl and explore and get in whatever trouble we could manage. I just came across some pictures of you and me on my front steps with your dog, the white lab (name escapes me) and it really brought me back to who were we then and who are we now and how that circuitous road led us to here? I remember we’d play a game where I was Catwoman and you were Kitten (or Batgirl?) and I would just boss you around…sounds like fun?! I will find more pics and send you more memories of the Dunns, The Woods, The Holbrooks, the Allens, the whole gang! We ruled the waspy Edgewood roads of our Jewish community! Ha ha. $carsdale was quite the trip!
I am amazed when I think of all the fun we had just playing in the road. Yes! A neighborhood of kids all running, jumping, sitting, laying down in the middle of the road. If I really put my mind to it, I can actually remember the texture of the road, a warm, bumpy paved surface – not like the slick hot black asphalt of today. The road was the meeting place, where groups of us gathered to play jump rope or hopscotch. We drew with different colored chalks huge imagined maps of the world with each of us king or queen of our territory and then declared “War” on each other. Kids fell off of skateboards, and got bruised up on the road. When it rained we sat on the curb and made boats out of leaves and twigs which we set alight on the water rushing by in the gutter. Dogs ran loose and kids ruled the road; slowly and grudgingly we got out of the way if a car should try to make its way tentatively passed us during one of our games.
I made friends with Desiree, who lived a few blocks away from me, and we met up by the school on Edgewood Road and made imitation dog poo out of mud, which we placed strategically on the sidewalk – watching and waiting and giggling to see what would happened when someone passed by. One of my first artistic endeavors.
As I remember it, my sister and brother and I were often the first kids called in for the night to go to bed. There was embarrassment to this, and I was concerned about how this might further negatively impact my reputation as a “goody good” in the neighborhood. But there was something nice too, laying in bed as it got dark, and hearing the sounds of kids still out playing in the road. Then little by little their mothers and fathers calling them in for the night. I was usually asleep by the time the noise of children’s games was replaced by the buzz of cicadas as night fell and everyone went home.
This project begins with no definite goal in mind, and comes about as the result of a longtime inner nagging that there is something important to explore, to say, about growing up on Edgewood Road. How did the way we grew up 30 or 40 years ago, in a particular time and place, set the stage for who we are today? What do we remember that was fun or silly – or scary? How is the way we grew up different from how our children (if we have them) are growing up? What do we miss? What are we relieved to have survived about the much less supervised childhood of a generation ago?
These are some of the things I’d like to explore with others who were kids living in the neighborhood called Edgewood, in and around Edgewood Road. We played and went to school together, teased and tormented each other, feared and admired the older kids, looked-out haphazardly for the little kids, went on vacations with each others’ families and simply sat on the front step of each other’s houses, with parents often only a distant reality.
Anything else that anyone would like to write about, from this time, is OK too.
Edgewood Road 