LETTERS TO MY HIGH SCHOOL NEWSPAPER

Buses and Such

My dad was a security patrolman out in the area when I was growing up. He'd catch his bus out on the corner there at Perkins and Van Geisen, right in front of Jimmy HEIDLEBAUGH's '65' house, and I always thought he looked pretty darn neat leaving out the back door of our ranch house in his uniform and carrying his lunch bucket, and on out our back yard and down alley behind Charlie NEVIN's '65' house towards the bus stop. We called it an alley, but it was really just the wide grassy area behind the rows of houses during those years before anybody fenced in their yards.

This was around 1951 or 2, I'm guessing.

Lordy...

By the time I was in 6th and 7th grades, those wide, grassy alleyways between our neighborhood ranch houses had been pretty much gobbled up by fences and property lines. Almost everybody had a fence, suddenly. We had a fence, Charlie NEVINS had a fence, and so did Jimmy HEIDLEBAUGH. But out of custom and courtesy, some or most fenced yards still had adequate space for kids to get through. Alleyways between the back fences or pathways between the houses. You see, the neighborhood kids all still had their long established routes of passage back and forth to school. For years and years, kids had been cutting across our backyard and then down the short alleyway behind the NEVIN's house to HEIDLEBAUGH's corner in order to cross Van Geisen to get to Jason Lee Grade school or Chief Joseph Jr. High.

Every school morning I'd eat my toast while looking out our kitchen window at the neighborhood kids coming up our driveway and cutting across our backyard. Nobody thought anything about it.

That's just the way it was. Kind of like the wildebeest on Discovery Channel. You can't all of a sudden in 1956 throw up a fence across their migratory path and expect them to go all the hell way around the block and down to Sanford Ave. in order to get to school.

On a snowy winter evening during 7th grade, while standing with David RIVERS '65' in the alley behind HEIDLEBAUGH's fence there on Van Geisen, David lobbed a snowball that landed on the windshield of a passing car being driven by a really tough high school kid named Benny Angel. Benny jerked his car over to the curb and got out, and David and I took off down the alley towards the gate to my backyard. While running and sliding over the snow towards the safety of my yard, we both knew to keep to the far left edge of the alleyway, because months prior we'd dug a series of holes in the dirt in the middle of the alley to trip anybody who might someday be chasing us. And this was that someday.

But it didn't work. Benny Angel ran over our boobytraps like they didn't even exist. And by the time we reached my back door, he was already hopping over my back gate.

We scrambled inside and locked the door and hid there in the furnace room in the little closet where the presto logs were stacked.

Benny Angel banged on my back door with his fist, and David and I crouched in the dark.

My dad was working swingshift and my mom was gone somewhere, so my sister, Judy, '62' (RIP) was the only one home, and she came back from out in the kitchen with her hair in curlers and shouted through those little square windows in the back door.

"Who is it?"

He'd been banging really hard, and I could tell from her voice that she was probably a little scared. Plus, she wasn't too happy about having some "boy" looking through the windows at her in her curlers.

"What 'you WANT?" she shouted at him.

His voice was muffled, but David and I could still hear. "I wanna talk to your d*mn little brother, Judy." (Jeezuz! Benny Angel knew my SISTER!)

"He isn't here," she yelled.

"Bullshi*t. I just saw him run in there. Him and his friend."

"No, you didn't," she shouted. "He's not home." And technically, she was telling the truth. David and I could see her, but she hadn't seen us.

Benny Angel banged his fist on the door again.

"Get OUTTA here, Benny! My mom'll be back home inna minute."

"You tell him I'm looking for him, Judy," we could hear him say. But his voice was already fading away. "You tell'm that."

And he was gone.

Off across my backyard and out the back gate and down the alley. Because remember, he'd left his car half parked at the curb on Van Geisen, maybe even with the keys in the ignition--such being the nature of our safe little town.

My sister never saw us. We stayed quiet against the presto logs until she went back out through the kitchen into the livingroom.

Then we crept out the back door and down the side driveway to Turner Street.

We'd had enough of alleyways for awhile.

TDK (65)

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