Today I was driving in South Austin and I stopped at a
light. Suddenly, as I looked around, I realized that my surroundings were very
familiar. The names of the businesses and the color of the buildings had
changed, but the memories came rushing at me like a locomotive. I was in my old
neighborhood.

The light turned green and instead of listening to Siri,
telling me to turn left, I turned right. Although I had never driven the
streets, I knew them well. The Safeway that is now a Sprouts.  The BBQ place that was now a Mexican restaurant.
The neighborhood that was huge in the eyes of an 8 year old kid was now just a
couple of blocks of strip malls and some older and more established houses that
could use a bit of TLC.

I took a second right and recited the address aloud by
memory. “6905 Cannon League Drive”. 
There it was, on the left hand side of the street, right across from the
alleyway behind the strip mall. My family and I lived in this house from the
time I was in 2nd grade though 5th.

There used to be a tree in the front yard that I would
lay under and read the backs of baseball cards. Committing the card number,
wins, home runs, batting average, jersey number and position to memory. I can’t
remember what my wife said to me 10 minutes ago, but I can tell you that Dale
Murphy hit 36 home runs in 1983. 

On the sidewalk in front of the house, my brothers and I
would build some sweet ramps to do some kick ass jumps off of. Mike once jumped
his bike and ran over Jimmy’s leg. His leg was fine and nothing got broke, but
Jimmy did shout the phrase “I need a new knee” over and over again
till we all started to laugh. Mom took away our cement blocks and wood after
that.

In the kitchen we had, what was meant to be, an outdoor
picnic table with one of those floral print plastic table covers. This was the
only way all 6 of us could eat dinner at the same time.  In the den was a record player and I remember
setting the needle on records by Bobby Bare, Hoyt Axton, Hank Jr. and any other
artist my dad wanted to hear, at volume level 11, after he got off work on Friday
nights. Possibly the start of my DJ career?

One time, an older neighborhood kid picked on me and my brother
Michael chased him down to his house. The kid closed the screen door and stuck
his tongue out at Michael. Michael then punched the kid through the screen. 45
minutes later I got to meet my first police officer as he sat, at our picnic
table in the kitchen, explaining to my brother that maybe doing that wasn’t the
best idea. My dad drank a beer in front of the cop and I can only imagine that
this was some strange form of rebellion. My father had punched his share of
kids back when he was Michael’s age and I am sure that his father drank a beer
when the cops knocked on his door.

I started my first business in this neighborhood when I
was 8. I put up signs and went door to door asking people if I could rake their
yard for a dollar. I would collect the leaves and bring them back to my front
yard so we could jump in them later. In true Tom Sawyer fashion, I got smarter
and convinced a few other kids to do the work for me. I took 50 cents and they
split the rest between them. They were my (well my dad’s) rakes and I brokered the
deal, so I felt validated to take the most money. At age 8 I was a yard raking
Forman!  My dad realized that our yard
was the dumping ground for the leaves and shut down my business before it
really got off the ground. At least I had the best pile of leaves to jump into
for a few days before being forced to bag them and set them by the curb.

Neighborhood kids would come over to play football in our
backyard because it was on a corner lot and that made it the biggest yard on
the block. The cement patios framed the field and represented the foul lines. While
taking this detour today, I realized that my yard wasn’t as big as I imagined
it to be.  I recall it taking forever to
run from the backyard to the back fence. 
At glance, from my now adult perspective, that trip is now about 10
large grownup sized steps.

I was allowed to ride around the block by myself and
bicycles were the only form of after school transportation. I could be gone for
hours and nobody would ever wonder or worry.

At 9, I was old enough to pick my younger brother Jimmy
up from daycare and walk with him the additional 1.3 miles to our home.  This was a few minutes before my brother and
sister would get home from school and just enough time to grab a quick snack. I
opened the front door with a key that I wore on a string around my neck. I
never really heard the phrase “latchkey kid” till I went to college,
but I guess that’s what I was.

We would chase down the ice cream truck in the
summer.  If we missed him, we would ride
our bikes fast, stop and listen and then ride fast again. If we caught him, my
dad insisted we got him something as well.

Michael and I would jog to 7-11 on Sunday morning, with
every quarter we owned, just to play the Punch-Out arcade game. (Punch-Out! Not
the Mike Tyson version). We were pissed when they changed it out for another
arcade game. We stopped jogging after that and settled for the Atari and the
13″ black and white TV that sat in our bedroom closet. Although my dad
knew we had one, he would get pissed when he saw us play it if there was
daylight outside.

Halloween was during football season, so in order to save
money, we would dress as football players when we trick or treated.

Juan Padilla’s mom didn’t speak a word of English and
would yell into our backyard around dinnertime. We always assumed he was in
trouble because she always sounded so pissed off and Juan would leave our yard
with his head down. Juan could never hit my fastball and that too would piss
him off.

Our dog Katie would escape from the backyard at least
once a week and one of those escapes produced several puppies that were birthed
in a cardboard box in our backyard. I used the skills I perfected from asking
neighbors if I could rake their yards to help give the puppies away. Soon,
several people in our neighborhood had black and white puppies. Katie later got
fixed and I didn’t really know what that meant, but assumed it was something
she needed to get done.

I got in my first fight, had my first kiss, picked up my
first scars and created countless first time memories that could fill pages and
pages of a book based on the first 10 years of my life. 

This life occurred before I was forced to learn about
sex. Before the truth about Santa Clause. Before my confidence was ever rattled
and before I was forced to learn about mortality and the loss of a brother. Now
brothers. Before life forced me to #Tryharder.

 

These were my Wonder Years.