Brakesy Locks: Childhood Simplicity

Brakesy Locks:  Childhood Simplicity


         One Tuesday evening late in the summer of 1999, I left my downtown apartment and drove the thirteen miles or so north on Interstate 95 to my mother’s house in Northeast Philadelphia.  I make this trek to the “Northeast” at least once a week to visit my family, especially my mother.  My family still lives in the same neighborhood where I was raised, in the very same rowhome.  On this particular night, my mother was sitting on the front steps when I pulled up in front of the house.  Sitting on the front steps, I commented to my mother how quiet it was on the street.  This surprised me since this street has always been alive with children, especially during the last week of summer vacation.  My mother responded that the kids do not come out and play anymore, that it’s not the same as it was when I was a child.  We began to reminisce about the how the street was years before, teeming with children playing hopscotch and wiffle ball, riding big wheels and bicycles.  I wondered where all the children were.  I know there are still a lot of children living on this street, so what are they doing?  And then I came to a realization that I found upsetting:  kids do not want to be kids these days.  Children aren’t satisfied with being children, so they are acting more “grown up”.  The world that they live in is very different than the world I lived in as a child.  These children see more of the harsh realities of today’s world than I even knew existed as a child; therefore they tend to rush through childhood to enter the “grown up” world.  They don’t know that they should be cherishing the innocence of childhood before it’s gone forever.  My mother and I took a trip down memory lane that muggy August evening.

         My parents bought their house in February 1976.  They were a young married couple with a three and a half year old daughter and another bundle of joy ready to make his way into our little family.  (My parents have since divorced, although they remain friends).  My father’s carpenters’ union was building a new development of rowhomes on a previously undeveloped lot of land not far from where my parents were raised.  Together my parents decided to buy one of these houses.  They picked an end house attached to a duplex on one side and sharing the front steps with another house on the opposite side.  The house has three bedrooms and a backyard – perfect for a budding family.  Since the neighborhood was brand new, most of the occupants were similar to us.  Back then, most wives were still housewives and the husbands went off to work each morning.  To this day, I am so glad my mother was able to stay home and raise us.  I may not be who I am today if she had to work through my formative years.

         Within a few years, the children of these young families forged friendships with each other (some lasting over twenty years).  There were at least thirty of us, and believe me, this is no exaggeration!  Since our street is a cul-de-sac, it is the only street that does not connect with another street within the neighborhood.  Both ends of the street lead out to a major avenue, therefore forcing us to become each other’s everyday playmates.  It was a rare day when Laury Place was quiet.

         During those lazy days of summer, we would spend most of our days in our backyards.  Our backyards are perfect rectangles, separated only be green link fences.  Each family had a nice cement patio which was home to picnic tables and charcoal grills.  Beyond the patio, the rest of the yard was grass.  And, if you were lucky, the grassy section of the yard had a swing set anchored into the ground as ours did.  Each day during the summer, my mother would dress us in our bathing suits, slather sunblock all over us, fill up the children’s wading pool and set up her lounge chair.  She would lay on her lounge chair basking in the sun’s rays reading a book, while keeping an eye on me and my brother.  The two houses to the left of our house also had children our ages and their moms went through the same summer ritual each morning.  The other children and I would spend hours in our little pools and playing on our swing sets.  At about noon each day, our moms would go into the house to make our lunches.  Mom would come back outside with our Ronald McDonald lunch trays.  We would sit at the picnic table eating our peanut butter and jelly sandwiches, always leaving the crust behind.  To us, lunch was just another part of our day, an interruption in our fun filled summer days.  It never occurred to me that one day, as an adult, I may be trying to make leftovers from one dinner last for a week of lunches.  The food was always just there, ready to be eaten.

         By mid-afternoon on any given day, the street would begin to come alive.  There used to be a big tree in front of each house.  The sun would cast a huge shadow in front of my house that covered the length of the walkway.  That shadow provided enough shade to shield us from the brutal summer heat.  Sitting on the shaded cement walkway, I would play with my Barbie dolls with my girlfriends for hours.  There would be at least three or four big yellow Barbie campers parked in front of my house.  Back then, we didn’t have video games to fry our brains.  We used our minds and imaginations every time we played a game.  Our Barbie dolls had elaborate lives that we created for them.  It was as if we were child writers for a Barbie soap opera.  While the girls were playing with their Barbies and baby dolls, the boys would have their own imaginative games.  Whether they were playing with their Matchbox cars or their action figures, they were also creating their own fun. 

         It was only a matter of time before the fathers began to return home from work.  And we knew that as soon as we saw our own father pull onto the street, we would be called in for dinner.  One by one our mothers would call our names from inside their screen doors.  It was a like a cattle call each evening.  I would sit at our dinner table trying not to fill up on the meal because I knew that the ice cream man would be rounding our corner soon.  My brother and I would patiently pick at our plates until one of our parents finally said we were excused.  We would run outside as if a fire were burning behind us.  There was nothing worse (in our eyes) than to be the last of the kids to be cooped up inside for dinner when there were bikes to be ridden and games to be played.

         After dinner the parents would also begin to trickle outside.  I didn’t realize it then, but now I know that summer evenings were my favorite time of day.  Dads were outside watering lawns and washing cars, while moms sat in cliques on someone’s front steps chatting the night away.  The evening was alive with the sounds of air conditioning units whirring, spraying garden hoses, garage doors opening and closing, pogo sticks bouncing, airplanes flying low overhead (due to the proximity of our neighborhood to a small airport), children laughing and the occasional parent scolding a child.  Somehow, above the din of nightly activities, the familiar sound of the ice cream man’s song was heard by each and every child at about the same time.  Our ears were tuned in to that beautiful song even though it was streets away.  All of a sudden, kids went running home, screaming and begging their parents for ice cream before the truck even turned our corner.  Those nights when I was allowed to buy something from the ice cream man were just about the greatest thing that could ever happen in my young mind.  I would sit on my front steps eating my Cannonball or Chocolate Éclair thinking that life couldn’t possibly get any better.  I took those nights for granted, as we all did.  We didn’t realize that as we grew older, our lives wouldn’t always be so easy.  We saw the world through the eyes of children.  We thought that life was just that simple, never realizing what our parents went through on a daily basis to keep our lives that way.

         Every night all of the children would meet in the street in front of my house to play baseball.  We played with a wiffle ball bat, but we used a tennis ball instead of a wiffle ball.  This wasn’t a problem until we grew a little older and stronger.  That’s when cars began to get dented and the occasional house window was smashed by a home run.  (My parents had to pay for at least one new window as my brother’s talent for power hitting surfaced.)  These baseball games were the glue that kept us together.  It never mattered what your age was or the fact that not everybody liked each other; everybody played.  These nightly games brought us together as one group of people.  Toward the end of each night, we forgot our difference and had fun together.  All of the struggles and arguments of the day diminished for the game.

         After a while, the darkness would envelop the street, with only the streetlights giving light.  It was more fun to wait until nightfall to play chasing games, such as tag or freedom.  Freedom was my personal favorite.  As a team member caught someone from the opposing team, he or she had to say, “One, two, three, you’re my man, no brakesy locks”.  The caught child wasn’t officially caught until this phrase was completed.  There are times when I will see children playing this game nowadays, and that one simple phrase brings me right back to the place of my childhood.

         Not long ago, on that warm evening sitting on my mother’s front step of my childhood home, I became painfully aware that I am an adult.  Life is not easy.  I don’t have someone cooking meals for me and cleaning up after me.  I have to go to work every day and do my laundry and other various household chores each night.  I rarely have time to enjoy a good book or spend my time exactly the way I want.  I have responsibilities now.