t’s not a clear recollection, probably because it was over 40 years ago. But I’ll try and summon some of those images from 1967, when my family and I moved back to Lakewood in North Little Rock, after a five and a half year absence. It was during the summer, about a month after my 10th birthday and near mom’s 38th.
Maybe it was even her birthday present, but whatever the reason, she had finally talked dad into moving us back to Arkansas, after stays in Jacksonville, Ill., Sioux City, Iowa and the last stop, Oklahoma City. Today, it’s hard to conceive that I could have ever been a diehard fan of the Fighting Illini, Hawkeyes, or worst of all, Boomer Sooners. It was probably a hot day in 1967 when we arrived in our green Olds Vista Cruiser, with the wood grain panel and the seat in the rear, which faced backward, so you could see where you’d been. Mom had picked a house on the east side of the street, where the houses didn’t back up to a lake, because she’d never learned to swim, and knew she couldn’t save us. The brick, ranch-style house with three bedrooms cost them $26,000.
My brothers, Dean, who was 7, and Bill, 5, along with me, added to the majority of boys in the fewer than 20 homes on the road that connected Crestwood with Lakeview. It was called Kent, and most of it was flat, but the rest, the part we lived on, was a hill, which on those rare days when all the factors worked out just right, became to us a snowy mountain slope. There were Cavins and Cooks, Killebrews and Barrows, Youngs and Freelings – and kids everywhere. The Cavins, like mom and dad, also had three boys. The oldest was Trey. We were born two weeks apart and soon became inseparable.
One late afternoon, Dr. Young, who lived down the street, was pouring fresh cement in a square in the sidewalk in front of his house. We watched him, and then as he finished and went inside, we moved in for a closer look. There’s nothing quite like wet cement to a ten-year old boy, and Trey soon had a stick and was writing his name. He already had TRE spelled out when I joined him. Just as I finished with my A, a yell made us jump. It was Dr. Young. “GET AWAY FROM THERE!” he shouted. We ran, which we were always doing back in those days, off to find another adventure.
It was a time of fried baloney and ten-ounce Cokes; burr haircuts and banana seat Sting Rays, drive-in movies and getting under our wooden desks at school, in preparation for the inevitable Communist aggression. That school was Crestwood Elementary, the Crickets, which, looking back now probably didn’t instill much fear in the hearts of whoever our rivals were at the time. We played games outside ‘til way past dark, when our mothers had to yell two or three times for us to come in; after that it got turned over to dad, who only had to whistle once. Our games were kick ball and army, where you had to count to 50 if someone killed you before you could get back in the game. We bounded over chain link fences, appreciating the smooth, folded edged ones, over the pointy sharp ones, which left you with cut hands and torn T-shirts.
Mom finally left her house on Kent Road earlier this year, for the last time. She is now 82 and has come to a point where she needs lots of help, so it was time. She was the last one from those old days to move on. We sold the house to a young couple with a three-year old and a baby who told me, “Anytime your mom wants to see the house, she’s more than welcome.” I appreciated that.
I went by a couple of days before we closed for a last look. I shut the front door behind me and looked out at the gentle hill that had once seemed so steep. There were two kids walking up it, pushing their bikes. One of them even had a burr haircut. I watched as they walked by and hoped they were jumping fences in the night and screaming with joy as their sleds rocketed down the hill. I drove down Kent and then thought of something as I came to one of the houses. I parked my car on the street, got out and looked down at the sidewalk. There, in the grey cement I saw the old letters – TREY and JA. Then something made me look back up the hill to where those two boys pushing their bikes had been, but they were gone. Just as two other boys I had been suddenly reminded of were gone now, too.