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.