Homemade Ghosts:
Memories of a Childhood
The neighborhood where I grew up, isn’t what it used to be. All I have are these crumbling memories of what once was. Fragmented pieces of the past. Much of what once was, has become but a smoldering haze. Lingering ghosts.
Just like childhood, the neighborhood was once a magical place. Seven houses all together on the block. None of them the same. An old red brick street. Those bricks are only a memory now. The red brick got covered with several layers of blacktop pavement one Summer morning. I sat on the front porch that morning and watched. Sweated and watched. The city street maintenance crew covered up that wonderful brick pavement. I sat there on the porch, sweating in the heat, just to remember the moment. Covering up memories of bumpy bike rides. The unique sound of cars driving over the bricks. The crew covered the brick pretty quickly. Over and done with. All before lunch time. I looked on at the idle trucks in the blissful summer heat. Reminiscing already.
Whelp, there goes the neighborhood.
Oh, there’s six houses now too. One house was demolished to make way for a much bigger yard for their dog. Lawn mowed at least twice a week as soon as the Winter snow melted. Like clockwork. Meticulously making sure that the grass was a perfect green. By the end of the summer, the warm Summer sun tended to bake the grass a nice brown color where the house once stood. As if it was a lingering ghost.
The neighborhood is filled with ghosts……
The tall, white two-story house that once sat there.
I’d occasionally ponder on the porch at times, gazing at it. Daydreaming. Daydreaming about the chestnut golden haired, uber-smart girl that once lived there. Distant friend and super-secret crush. Eight-year-old Jackie would always come over and sit cross-legged on the sidewalk in front of me soon after we moved in. She’d examine her bug collection in gleefully mature excitement. Her glasses poking up against the dull plastic box. Watching the tiny ants and beetles. She could go on and on, explaining the scientific facts she knew about each insect she had caught, all very matter of factly. All the while, I’d just stare back in childlike awe.
I once tried to steal a kiss from her. In order to express the way I felt about it. The only way a clueless, nerdy and shy boy knew how. I beckoned her to the backyard. Into the darkened garage. Away from prying eyes. I ended up kissing her on the cheek. Such excited fast pace anticipation. That kiss was more of a slobbery wet mess. She dashed back home. All in a fright. The incident was left forever unsaid between us.
Her younger brother Ethan became a different kind of ghost—one of laughter. I was resting on their hot summer blacktop driveway one day, after a little game of basketball. My back against the closed garage door. Noticing the white paint peeling way, I looked up at the little guy.
“I’m all pooped out,” I managed to breathe through the humid air. The sweat was dripping down my forehead.
He froze, midway through shotting a basket. The basketball bouncing away. His eyes wide. Looking over at me in disbelief.
“Whoa!” He looked at me with such fantastic fascination and walked over to me. Sitting cross-legged next to me. Staring at me with his pure childhood curiosity. The basketball dribbling away, off to hide in the cool shade of the bushes.
“You don’t have any more poop left in you?!” He asked me. Awe-struck.
“No! No! Haha! I didn’t mean it like that,” forgetting his young mind didn’t understand the metaphor. “What I meant to say, was, that I’m tired. That’s what “pooped out” means.
I started to laugh some more and gulp for air in the humid summer heat.
“Well,” he said, “when you get unpooped, can you play some more?” He asked me casually, getting up and running to get the ball to play some more. Unfazed by the humidity.
Then there was Zack. He lived a few houses down from me in a two-story Italian-style white stucco house. He was an early childhood friend that I could count on. Whenever I was outside, he’d come bounding forever from his house to mine. Stuttering away about something absolutely amazing. I could hear him call my name from his yard if he saw me sitting on my porch steps. He’d endlessly trip over the rock and pebble paved circle driveway that separated our houses. Frantically flaying his arms all about. Screaming in such unadulterated excitement. Clutching his newest GI Joe or Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtle action figure.
Zack was of the sort who was practically, almost always, purely filthy. Dirt faced. Greasy bed head red matted hair. Clothes a bit tattered. It was due his massive imaginary wars that he played with his toys. Held in his enormous backyard sandbox and mud pit. I was deeply in awe of his massive toy collection. Envious of his uncountable number of action figures that could be found throughout the backyard and even in various cavernlike rooms of his house. The ‘stub-your-toe-in-the-middle-of-the-night’ kind of situation.
Here he came. Bursting forth. With such incredible excitement. Across the pebbled driveway between our house and his. Stumbling forever. Rocks flying. Dust accumulating. It always took a few moments to fully comprehend what in the world Zack was rambling on about. He tended to mumblely blunder and jumbley jitter and stumble stutter at a rat-a-tat-tat rate of hyper-charged speed. It always made me laugh and got me all enthusiastic as well.
My mom had to constantly remind him, “slowwwwww down, Zack,” whenever she saw him coming.
Being a boy and all. I magically knew what he was saying. At least, from time to time. As I got older, that untainted childhood imagination and boyhood connection I had with him faded. We grew apart. The magic faded. Whenever he talked, I tilted my head, squinted at him, and tried my darndest to fully understand the kid.
A few blocks away, there’s train tracks. A passing train is hypnotic and beautiful. The sound of a train horn. That low crying banshee wail of a whistle. Soft at first. Gradually growing louder. It’s such an event. Most especially in the summer. If you’re brave enough to suffer from the heat and have all the windows and doors open. You’d think the train was right outside. It was something I had grown so used to that I stopped paying attention to the sound. The beat. But, you can’t help but realize it. The sound. Rushing through town. Windows rattling. Thunder booms. Boxcar. Boxcar. Boxcar. Boxcar. Clickity clack. Clickity clack. Each box car, almost like a somber funeral train in the beginning. Slow rigid speed at first. Then, a long, deafening roar. That noise. Noise. Noise. Noise. That noise. It was everything and nothing. All at once.
But…….
That banshee wail has since ceased. Sound itself no longer reborn and renewed with each passing train.
But, you can still listen for the train. It stirs in the distance. Boxcar. Boxcar. Boxcar. Clickity clack. Clickity clack. Clickity clack. A ghost. Rolling. Rolling right through.
Once upon a time, there was a small forest of trees that were part of the neighborhood block. The jungle of trees were watched over by a quiet grey-haired witch of a lady. At dusk, each evening like clockwork, she’d walk around her forested yard with an old lantern, surveying her sacred leaf covered woodland. Making sure the squirrels hadn’t disturbed anything. No balls or other toys from neighborhood children troubling the forested floor.
At any given moment, you’d find her soberly sitting observant. Stone faced. In a rocking chair by the front door to her small-scale antebellum style brick house. Her brick house was hidden behind ivy, its porch shadowed by branches. You half expected to hear a high-pitched screech or a long witch-like cackle during a full moonlit night.
Like everything else, all that has long since vanished. No longer the creepy woods that fueled my nightmares as a child. Just another well-manicured grassy yard. Trees chopped. Forest floor no more. Ivy torn down. Long forgotten.
My house isn’t the same either. There are ghosts hidden within these walls. Stories worth telling. Built by my grandfather oh so many years before I was even a thought.
- - - - - - - - - -
-*The Things My Dad Taught Me*-
Of all the ghosts, my dad’s presence is the biggest one.
It's been some years since my dad’s passing. I try not to dwell on it. So much of him had vanished as he lost his strength, power, and spirit over the course of just a few months in the hospital. It was not something I could really handle. He had become a shell of a man that I once knew as my father for 30 years of my life. He slowly deteriorated away in front of me. Drifting in and out. Losing consciousness. Just laying there in that hospital bed. Tubes everywhere. Machines beeping. All of it keeping him alive. It was difficult letting him go. Sixty-five years on this earth is not enough as you grow into adulthood. The years getting to you.
My dad was quite literally, the real-life version of Tim Allen's character, Tim Taylor, from the TV sitcom, Home Improvement. Mixed in with his sidekick, Al. Yes, he was a true hoarder of tools and a genuine Mr. Fix-It/Mr. Break-It. I was actually a bit stunned when Tim Allen was in the Santa Clause movie. THAT's my dad, just prior to all the white hair and beard.
My dad had a beer belly gut and brown curly hair. He wore goofy well-rounded eyeglasses. He almost always needed to get his eyebrows waxed. They tended to get very bushy. So much so, that if he didn't fix them, they'd be upturned in such a way that he looked like some cartoonish smiling super-villain. Oh, of course he had that classic jolly beer belly type of laugh.
My dad always wore buttoned up flannel shirts and blue jeans. He never wore sneakers. He always wore these brown penny loafer type of dress shoes. I even inherited the trademarked plumbers butt crack from him, so I do my very best to wear long t-shirts in order to prevent others from witnessing that very unfortunate sight. It was a sight I had to constantly shield my eyes from whenever I was his helper in fixing something around the house.
My dad had this very dynamic personality. It was a purely positively energetic type of personality. Very personable and friendly. Wherever he went, no one was a stranger. There are countless stories, tips, tricks, ideas, thoughts and philosophies and advice that my dad like to share with anyone within earshot. In fact, my dad offered advice whenever possible. I always rolled my eyes and just endured. Listening to what he had to say in order to just be done with it and move on to the next teaching moment.
My dad always had a story. A story that would become more and more exaggerated with each telling. I strive to walk in his footsteps.
My dad never met a stranger. It came as no surprise when I pulled to the cemetery and saw a massive crowd of people surrounding the gravesite. Friends. Neighbors. Folks I’d never seen before. All drawn there by his stories, advice, his laugh, his way of turning strangers into companions. Waiting to say goodbye to him.
I constantly remind myself to always strive to walk in his footsteps. Friends. Stories. Tips and tricks. But, more importantly, living this life with plenty of heart.
These homemade ghosts will always linger. They will never fade from my memory.
They follow me.
They are part of me.
Some ghosts are worth keeping.