Their names are remembered like dreams but they are tattooed in my mind. A forever etched memory in my childhood. My old phone number: 503.643.1353. Call it. See if someone still has it. Ask for Rachel. Holly's old number was 646.9466. That was an easy one to remember. I could type it into the phone in less than a second.
***
In front of Holly's house was a pile of barkchips and an old wood trailer. A ham radio antenna emerged from the roof and if you were standing a certain distance from across the street you could see the fort behind the house which was so high you could touch the powerlines if you were standing inside.
Holly had a trampoline in the backyard. The backyard was mostly dry with patches of grass and for reasons unknown, was infested with a huge amount of black spiders.
Most of the time Holly and I ate dry top-ramen and watched tv.
Holly had a square pink FM radio that was always tuned to Z100 and I remember going to sleep listening to Always Be My Baby by Mariah Carey. Holly made it very clear she was Christian. Her family took me to their church once. During the youth ministry some guy talked about how in the future, "very soon," people were going to have microchips implanted in their brains. He told us that Chistians would resist having the implants and be persecuted. I on the other hand found the prospects of having a microchip in my brain very exciting.
***
Alice and I walked home from school together for a long time before we ever spoke. I know this sounds weird. we both lived really close and walked home at the same time but we didn't talk. Then one day we did.
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I guess you could call Steven Mach the Chinese kid. He walked home from school with Alice and I. Alice was the Korean kid. Alice went to my church. Steven was Buddhist. Walking home from school one day Alice found out Steven was Buddhist and said he was going to hell. I disagreed. It was a pretty horrible experience. Alice eventually became kind of exclusive with the other Korean kids in school and stopped walking home from school with us.
***
There were these three brothers who lived across the street from Holly. Justin, Drew, and Mitch . Justin was Holly's age. Drew was my age. Mitch was my sisters age. They were Mormon and liked sports. I went into their house once and it was nothing spectacular. Once Holly and I pranked called their house. We talked through a towel to disguise our voice. Their dad came over because the family had caller ID and wanted to make sure everything was ok. It was really embarrassing.
***
Right next door was Mrs.Kennedy. Ash anyone, she is the Mother Theresea of the neighborhood. If you ask my sister the first thing she remembers from Mrs. Kennedy is candy. There is a video my dad shot of my very young siblings going to Mrs.Kennedy's house for candy, a regular pastime. My dad shoots the film from some distance to capture the moment like the children themselves were coming for a visit. In the video my sister reaches her hand up to ring the door bell. They wait. Then they start banging on the door and window viciously. Mrs. Kennedy never let us down. Once when Mrs. Kennedy gave me a glow-n-the-dark rosary. I had no idea what a rosary was but it was cool getting a glow-n-the-dark necklace.
***
Matt Paris is a liar. He called my parents "Mr and Mrs. Carmichael."
He told my dad once about a burgler breaking into his house and how he, Matt, got a rifle and fended off the burglary while his grandpa was afraid. For reason my dad called Matt's house to verify the story. It was not true. Obviously. Matt played video games all the time. He knew a lot about guns. It scares me to know he is still out their in the world.
***
Celeste was my sisters friend. Her parents had the backyard of my dreams. It had a playhouse with appliances. It had flower, vegetable, and herb gardens as well as fruit trees. Celeste's Mom, Claudia was famous to me for her bagels and cream cheese but mostly for her serving of snack in general which was not customary at my house. Celeste's Dad played wrote software guides (I believe) and played guitar.
Celeste went to a Waldorf school for her early years and had a big fluffy cat named Mina.
When I think of Ashley and Crystal I think of baked beans and kittens. Ashley is one of many Gemini's in my life born three months after me. Our Moms were pregnant together and living next-door so I could almost say I knew her since inuntero. There are many memories of Ashley and I together as we were best friends as young children.
Behind our houses there was a "crik" which was just passed the blackberry bushes and was full of crawdads and shells and treasure. We would wade in with rainboots and pioneer all the way to Celeste's house where there was a secret bush of rasberries.
Blackberry bushes.
Over the three foot chain link fence behind our backyard was a massive wild scrum of blackberry bushes. Unconquerable and growing - reaching their little thorny vines everywhere they can, they are deemed invasive.
To me they were a blessing and a summer treasure.We would use our shirts to hold blackberries when we were picking. On a succesful day our faces would be red with blackberry juice.
We had blackberry jam.
Blackberry pie.
We had blackberry juice.
Blackberry syrup.
Once we tried to make blackberry bread which was was just flour and blackberries and it didn't work. But it didn't matter, there were plently more blackberries to try again.
Blackberry marinade.
Blackberry with sprite.
Blackberries are best warm by the sun. You know a blackberry is good when it practically falls into your hand. When there are no red "druplets" or when then are soft to the touch.
Two things to keep in mind when picking blackberries: thorns and spiders. Make peace with both, not war.
We found, picking blackberries as children, to be careful of both. All of us believed if one were to fall into the bushes the thorns would cause us to quickly bleed to death. To fall would be to perish, of course.
But always the best blackberries were the one's fathest our of reach. The edelwiess of blackberries, I suppose.
Sirens of the fruit world.
The German People
Across the street in the white house with the green trim was the German people. Not once did I ever understand what they were trying to say even though they apparently spoke English fairly well (I am told). They were a really old couple and it was said they were married before or after WWII. I'm sure you want to know their politics but I'm sorry I do not know. Kids pay attention to the weird smells of people's houses before they are bothered with any kind of philosophic rheotric. I really hope someone besides myself has told their story or that would be a freaking shame.
Nancy from Nebraska
Nancy from Nebraska was a boy with another name but I forget what it was. I think Justin. He talked about Nebraska all the time because he really lived there and had to live in Oregon because of some kind of custory thing with his parents. Eventually he went to Nebraska and never came back.
He was kind of like the "Dill" of To a Kill a Mockingbird to our neighborhood. But instead of To Kill a Mockingbird we would be something like, "To Kill a Mallard Duck" because there were mostly ducks in our neighborhood. Unless you want to focus on the symbolism of the mockingbird in the story as a peaceful creature who never does any harm but is nonetheless persectuted. Take Boo Radley. Our Boo Radley would have definitely been
The guy across the street who had a push mower.
The guy across the street who had a push mower was only persecuted by my father who would often be found scoffing at him from behind the blinds from our living room. The persecution went no farther than that. He had a daughter who lived with him sometimes and he seemed to live like a Buddhist only from lack of initative. Driving a small white car no one besides himself ever seemed to come or go and no one had much interaction with him. Another mystery surrounding the GATSWTPM was that all the cats in the neighborhood used his under the house crawl space as their clubhouse. One would often see a cat or two ducking into the beneath workings of his white ranch-style abode.
Backyard garden soup
Saltlicker
As a child I loved salt. Almost as much as my sister loved sugar. The salt shaker in the cupboard was often encrusted with salt. Occasionally I would slip in from the kitchen and hide in the backyard by the wood pile. There I would lick all the salt off the lid and then sneak it back into the cupboard licked cleaned. Your welcome family.
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