Growing Up On Mean Streets - a Prologue

Dear Dick,
You are a master of recall. I did not grow up in Ohio, but little towns that had that kind of look and kind of people.

I remember a sidewalk that I walked down, weeds deeply embedded in the cracks of the concrete, the sides littered with debris and bigger weeds. A trail that went on out of the railroad tracks into the south side of town. I can smell that ragweed this minute!

I came to a corner where the pawn shop set. As I look back now, it was a seedy kind of side of the town, nothing but closed down and boarded up buildings. Gazing in that window where the jewels were displayed was something that has altered my dreams to this day.

In a way, it was like looking into the other side. All that pretty stuff that I could not have.

Looking at that memory out of my eyes this day, I understand about the need for simple beauty in a person's life. That and the need for peace.

I have found all those jewels and more in my woods and I know that you have found it looking out and past the pain of war.

Love,
Betty

I enjoyed reading this post a lot, Dick. I liked the slant and the detail. You went to school in the college of the world as it is, and in many ways, there's nothing better.

Malcolm

Good story Dick, Goon indeed and well told,
I as a yesterday’s man too, like very
much that kind of stories , It ha had been livelry street to grown up,
Unfortunally we have nothing like that anymore in our time, the whole world is sterilised
and cleared away, there is no more ugly, nor bat no good either. I miss
those days when there were still something to be find and the setting was more interesting,
- If possible I am at once ready to move
back to fifties, This is the most boring era of the historian of mankind we live to day.


Those old good days.

I grew up in a pleasant burb. It was too nice and after high school most went to live somewhere else. However, a woman down the street had an affair with a minister, another committed suicide, another drowned her children in the bathtub. Perhaps the "niceness" was only on the surface, which it very often is in those unreal places, places like new shopping malls and developments.

I live in a small town. Having had a mental health center here, I know the realities of the seedy stuff and also know kindness and down to earth living. When we moved there in 1975, most of the people had multiple generations of ancestors who had grown up there, you never talked about someone badly because you could be talking to their cousin, and many hadn't crossed the bridge over the river out of town and had no desire to do so.

And like Betty, there are those places that nurture our souls. Yesterday I spent two hours fishing with only nibbles and weeds on my hook, but looking out at a scene that could have been from a Northwoods calendar page. Life just doesn't get any better than the places we find, when those we've lived are lacking in many ways.

I do not remember my "nice" town where I grew up with the fondness you do yours, Dick. And it is not because of lack of appreciation. I do remember the people, but the town was like that in the movie where it is in black and white in the beginning, until the realities creep in and color takes over.

Life and places are like that. We need the color.

Carol

That is beautifully written, Dick. The reality of the experience comes through in every word, and the cadence of the words fits the experience and carries us right into the scenes you've described.

Everybody here has shared something from their childhoods, each different from the other, but each having a sense of nostalgia for something harder to find today. Life was simpler, life was real, and we had more freedom. My brother and I walked every Saturday from our home into the downtown part of the little city to the only movie theater to see the matinee. The doors to our house were never locked, and in summertime we roamed the neighborhood. Our parents had a vague idea of where we were, but were not concerned because they knew we would make it home by dinnertime. Sometimes we rode in the back of open pick-up trucks with wind blowing our hair in every direction. WE played "cops and robbers" and "cowboys and indians." We pulled crawfish out of their holes with long strings, pricked our imagination playing with dolls on pallets spread under the shade of the oak trees, and stayed cool running through water sprinklers and the spray of hoses.

I hear a strain of simplicity and freedom weaving its way into each of these reflections, whatever the setting, whatever the circumstances.. We are all different. We are all one.

Ann

I saw "prologue." Is it?

He said prologue for sure, DK, and I'm glad because I want to read more! That is a mini-short story in itself.

I think I may have even visited some "smoked fill bars" in my time! LOL

Dear Phil,
I remember those bars, smoke and loud, loud rock. Drugs, fights, a couple of murders over wives. Lots of pool.

There is a place in Gibsonton, Florida which is probably one of the seediest bars going, unless you could remember the County Line Bar, that connected Hillsborough and Polk county on Hwy 60. The former is called Dirty Dan's Three Corner Bar. You could breathe in and get drunk from all the booze spilt on the wooden floors.

I worked in a few of them when the drinking age in Florida was 18. 25 cent beer on Tuesday.

Every high school kid that could get out and drive a car was there. Rich people's kids. Not one idea of responsibilty, mamma and daddy took care of everything.

Lots and lots of puking.

Lots and lots of dying.

Love,
Betty

Enjoyed it Dick. No one can take away our memories. We can share them, but no one else can claim them.

Thanks for all the kind comments. Strange as it may seem, I was shocked to see this here because what I was doing was trying to copy and paste this somewhere so I get it onto my website. For some reason the site wouldn't accept it. Out of habit I must have hit "send" without realizing it.
Deathtown is a short story that will be in the November issue of Alfred Hitchcock's Mystery Magazine (available in early September). I was just fooling around and have no idea why I added "prologue" to the title although this will eventually be the lead-in to a collection of short stories.
Confused? So am I.

I did the opposite, Dick. I posted a comment late last night (UK time) and was surprised to find it gone this morning. Of course, it was on another thread. Still. it's good to know that I'm not the only one who is confused. Great prologue/lead-in by the way.

That prologue leads me to want more than a short story, but rather a novel that details all the pieces that are dropped as hints about what follows................

It's all a matter of likes and dislikes, DK. I much prefer short stories. I start reading a lot of novels but nine times out of ten quit reading after twenty pages or so. I do enjoy the nevels of P.D. James, Bill James, Peter Robinson and Stuart Kaminsky's about a Moscow detective. I also like novels written by a lot of dead guys.
A lot of the short stories and novellas I write tell a complete story. The series I've been writing since 1988 can be read like a novel if anyone wants to bother. Writing lengthy non-fiction doesn't bother me, lengthy fiction does. Just a case of preference, I suppose.

Dick, I may have been too subtle when I said, "I think I may have even visited some "smoked fill bars" in my time! LOL."

I'm sure you meant "smoke-filled bars"... or did you? Thinking about it, it really is a good play on words the way you wrote it!

"The doors to our house were never locked, and in summertime we
roamed the neighborhood. Our parents had a vague idea of where we were, but
were not concerned because they knew we would make it home by dinnertime.
Sometimes we rode in the back of open pick-up trucks with wind blowing"

Precisely Ann, Itseems been very similar everywhere in western world. I well remember the time after the II War when there were lot of young men roaming and walking on roads looking for some work and job. That time the main employers in summertime were the farms and the forest in winter. They were men, as tramps, jacks of all trades and they all came from the war where, many of them had spent his best youth. They were unemployment and homeless and many of them still wore they worn out military jackets since they not have any other clothes of
their own, so the government allowed them keep the clothes they had on.
Even there was so muchthat sort of men roaming on the road the doors of house in villages and rural area
were left open.
Many men find his onenight abode is some sauna and I re member once when I woke up in a night and
hear as somebody was speaking in the darkness and when mom lit the oil lamp
there was seen a strange man sitting in our room speaking by himself?

Nothing like that never happen to day, and as far I could member
there was deep solidarities among those which must be raised from the circulations
of the war time. They never kiked a man once fallen in fight. That cannot say to the youht of our days.

True, Harry, and that's unfortunate. Bad times often bring out the best in people.

Brew, you caught me on that one. I agree, though, that you may have understated the number of times you visited smoke-filled bars. Assuming you were like me, of course.

Luckily you guys didn't have asthma. I went to those smoke-filled bars to listen to a man my age play harmonica, and two younger men play drums, until my lung capacity dropped to fifty percent.

I really loved listening to that music. Smoke-filled bars seemed to be the only option for music many years ago. And now those bands are hard to find at all.

Carol

Oh, I love reading about this particular timeperiod in USA, like my my favourite Steinbecks Cannery Row and Sweet Thursday.

This give's the same kind of joy. Great work. I'd love to read more.