The neighborhood
I was awakened recently by the clap of thunder and the familiar drum of rain on the window, which immediately transported my mind back to summer days of my youth, in the “Neighborhood.” I am always amazed that such now distant memories from my childhood remain fresh, when I can’t remember what I had reminded myself to put on my to do list just 5 minutes ago!
Perhaps it is just the nature of the human condition that we have this capability to recall such vivid distant images but I, for one, am happy that it is so. With all the ups and downs of my entire life to recount and my current senior citizen status with all that portends, I relish these visions of the good old days.
This is not the first time I have written about the neighborhood, so if there are some repetitive inclusions, you will have to bear with me. One of the perks and frustrations of my age group, depending upon how you view it, is how we often relate the same old stories and events conveniently forgetting how many times we have told the same tales.
This recent thunderstorm turned my mind back to my grandmother’s front porch at 628 South Cedar Street. Her porch faced the east and it was a wide covered affair that spanned the entire front of the house. On this porch she had several summer wicker rocking chairs and perhaps my favorite piece of outdoor furniture, a glider.
The porch roof protected one from the elements in every season but winter. For me, there was never a better time to enjoy the porch than during a June thunderstorm.
My mind has retained all of the sensory recollections that were imprinted during a storm. The first and most memorable of these was that of the smell of the storm. There is a particularly gratifying scent that I recall from one of those thunderstorms. I can’t actually define the smell but I am sure all of you know that clean fresh odor that accompanies a spring rain. It is like the lyrics from a Dolly Parton song, “the world needs a washing, so why doesn’t it rain!”
Another rain event I recall from back then was included in a column I wrote a few years ago, about how the kids in my neighborhood played in the rain. We all had raincoats and rain boots we called galoshes.
The raincoats had hoods and were long enough to keep us almost completely dry. The boots rose almost to the bottom of the raincoat. One of our favorite kid things to do during one of these storms was to go wading in the ditches. Back then, there were still many streets that had not received curb and gutter or pavement. Such was the case with Douglas between Cedar and Main.
The roadbed had a brownish river colored rock. That particular block had a fairly steep incline that descended from the high point at the intersection with Cedar and dropped down to Main. On each side of the roadbed, there were ditches. They became a lot deeper and resembled gullies towards the end of their run at the bottom of the hill.
I can tell you that we thoroughly enjoyed getting in those ditches and wading during the rain. While the water gushed about our boots as we waded the length of the ditch, it was like viewing river rapids in a western movie.
Another favorite memory from those storm days of my youth included the majestic power and violence of those seasonal thunderstorms. For whatever reason I never seemed to have any real fear of those storms. I loved the thunder and lightening and watching huge raindrops pound the lawn and sidewalks. It is much like a satisfying gazing at the embers of a fire. There is something so riveting when you just sit back and enjoy nature.
The rains of my youth always offered an additional reward for me. Following these rain storms I loved to see how big an impact they had on our vegetable gardens.
By the time of these rain events we would have already sampled such spring offerings as leaf lettuce and radishes from the garden. A regular staple on our tables at this time was wilted lettuce complete with freshly pulled chopped garden onions.
If you don’t know what my grandmother’s table complete with this lettuce entree and her version of southern sweet tea tastes like, you have really missed some of life’s great summer offerings.
The rain on the garden also represented to me the knowledge that soon the other bounties of our vegetable patches would become available. In just a couple of weeks after a mid-June storm, sweet corn on the cob, tomatoes, green beans, cucumbers, onions and new potatoes would grace my family’s dinner table.
There was one food item that I always mentally associate with these delightful vegetables. My grandmother always seemed to have on hand some old style Missouri cured smoked ham. She would fry slices of this style ham and then make her version of what she called ‘red eye gravy.’
Close to the Fourth of July you could depend on a meal that included all of these offerings. Her made from scratch biscuits soaking up the red eye gravy was as good as it gets.
My final repetitive memory elected from these current rains is that of fishing. I cannot tell you how many times my grandfather and I spent watching our corks bob on the water of a fishing hole.
What I would give to have just one more hour with him fishing and talking. He was my greatest fan and he never seemed to find any of my childish behaviors bothersome.
The rains have made me remember and it makes me happy I live in a neighborhood that still enjoys good old-fashioned thunderstorms!