Not the same after 'Tar Wars'

It has been a while since my last article. We left off when my family had moved to a different house in the suburbs, but had been bothered by the introduction I had made for my mother. I asked my sister what she knew about my mother and father meeting. So, I will interject the new information here.

New information

As I had said, my mother had been studying to be a catholic nun but I did not know the details on how she had become my mother. She was in the convent and already had her teaching degree. When she approached the authorities (the diocese?) about studying to become a nurse, they had denied her request. She would just have to be a teacher. When my mother decided that she was going to leave the convent in order to pursue her passion, they had shoved her out the door at two o'clock in the morning. She was stuck on the streets with just the clothes on her back. My uncle had to pick her up. I think these circumstances are important because Mom never gave up her faith.

Later on, when she had almost finished obtaining her nursing license, she met my father. Two of her fellow nurses had met him because alcoholics anonymous meetings were held at the hospital where they all worked. They thought he was a nice man and set my mother up with him. The rest is history as they say. One of those women ended up being my godmother as it turns out.

My father did relapse back into drinking for a time, but I had nor recollection of that from our previous house. I did remember that he had had a broken jaw at one point. I did not know how that occurred. Some say it was a bar fight. Either way, it was at a time when he was drinking and the only memory that I have of that time is me, looking at a picture of him and asking why his jaw was wired shut.

To this day, I am severely irked whenever I must deal with an alcoholic. They cannot be dealt with using reason or logic in any sort of productive manner.

Back to experiences

The driveway led into the garage which was under the rest of the house. The driveway was made of coarse white gravel. I am not sure if our house was new or not, but I later saw this same gravel as a first functional medium for cars and trucks to park outside a new home that was being built. I remember it because playing anywhere near it caused my clothes to be covered in white dust. I may as well have been playing in a pile of chalk sticks like those used in schools, at the time.

I am not sure when I learned to ride my first bike, but I do remember my younger brother and I coasting down the hill, making the right turn into the driveway, and if successfully able to stay upright through the chalk-gravel, we hit the smooth floor of the garage and hit our brakes to see who could make the longest skid!

When my father got home, we were very surprised to see that he somehow knew what we had been doing all day. "This is not a @#%#@$ skidway!" and my mother would perk up and come to see what our fate might be. To this day, I have never heard anyone else in God's green earth call anything a skidway.

To the side of the drive was a part flagstone, part cement stairway leading up to the front door. Gravel was what defined the driveway which matched the street, though the street used smaller rocks and a good deal of black tar to bind the little white stones from moving too far.

We used to play in the street quite a bit. It was fun to pop the tar bubbles on hot days. Our army platoons never looked quite the same after their first epic battle of the street. "Tar Wars" changed the troops from green to black, and stuck together of course.

The only traffic that might have put us in danger would be Mr. Stevens coming home from work, but we were usually at the dinner table when his car came down the hill. The Stevens' house was the only one to the west, or down the hill, from our house. He also had a gravel driveway but instead skidding bikes, Mr. Steven's was annoyed by people who would turn around in his driveway after finding out that the street was a dead end. You could hear them accelerating, after backing out of his drive, gravel spewing from the rear tires as they left. There was Mr. Stevens shaking his fist in the air from his front stairs.

The article you are reading gives you a fair picture of the surroundings when playing in the front yard as a child. I am feverishly looking for any pictures I might have from that time in my distant past. My sister said she may have some pictures of the house when we were little. For now, I am searching for similar photos on the interweb. All photos used from other free sites are sourced with links in the text near each photo.

That's in for this one.

Have a look at some of my other articles.

You can also find me on Noise.Cash & memo.cash

Thank you!