Week 3 - What was your neighborhood like growing up?

We lived in three houses growing up, one of which I remember. So, that is the neighborhood that I'll write about - Wheatridge.

If I recall correctly, we moved to Wheatridge when I was four years old. Wheatridge is the neighborhood just north and west of 5600 South and 3500 West in Roy. To this day my parents own the house at 3452 West 5300 South. While the area has changed significantly from when we first moved there, it is what I call home.

My parents built the house in Wheatridge and I'm pretty sure that Dad had something to do with the design of the house. Dad loves to draw, design houses and play with architectural-like stuff. I recall numerous times watching him draw on his pad of graph paper. He has often told me that growing up he really wanted to design cars. I think Grandpa Hill had some of his connections build the house. While I still don't know much about Grandpa Hill's life, he did a lot with construction and I think he had some connections to the lot we built on and he and Grandma Hill helped to finance the house.

The house was huge for us. The basement remained unfinished for quite a while and we spent a lot of time playing down there. We'd ride bikes, roller skate and shoot Jason's bb-gun down there (I'm pretty sure Mom and Dad knew that, if not... surprise!). Dad did a lot of work down there finishing the house. I think I remember helping him down there on occasion. I had a memory in my mind of doing something with the framing downstairs on the wall that would have been between Amy's room and the hallway. I don't know if anything significant happened there, but I have one of those memory flashes that pictures me there with Dad working. The house was built on what all the neighbors used as their pet cemetery. I know we added quite a few pets to that yard in the back corner while we lived there as well. I'm pretty sure we added at least a few of our cats, hamsters, bunnies and the like to the lot.

The house was built on one-half acre of land. The front two-thirds of the lot had the house and yard, the back one-third was garden for as long as I remember. It was only recently that the garden spot was cut back to the back 15 feet or so of the lot. We would spend hours every morning during the summer in that garden. There were numerous lessons that were taught in that garden, some of which I didn't learn until a recent conversation with my little brother Ryan. Its funny how things Mom and Dad taught us weren't necessarily by lectures or even direct conversation. They taught us by doing. Mom and Dad are doers. Sometimes the doing was forced on us, but we were kids. It was Mom and Dad's responsibility to help us do the things that needed to be done until we reached an age that we could take on our own responsibility. I'm sure they were met with a lot of resistance, but they pushed on silently leading and teaching us.

If I remember correctly, Jason and I shared a room with bunk beds upstairs across the hall from Amy who had her own room. Mom and Dad were just across the hall from us next to Amy's room. Another vivid memory I have of that time was jumping off the bunk beds to numerous Michael Jackson's songs, "Beat It" is the one that comes to mind. We used to make a fort out of our bunk beds by tucking in blankets to the top bunk and draping in over the front so we had our own little private play place.

On to the neighborhood. The first thought that comes to mind is helping Dad put in the sprinkling system. Amy had a friend Dawn Gilbert that lived at the south end of the block. She had been playing at her house and was coming home as it was getting dark, so Dawn had walked Amy home with the big doberman pinscher dog that in my mind was trained to kill. I have always been afraid of big dogs, it may have been from this experience, but in my mind those dogs were bad news. Dad and I were in the front yard working on the pipes. I was probably just playing in the dirt by him. Amy and Dawn came around the corner and like any little brother that was excited to see his big sister would do, I hopped up and ran for her with open arms. As you can well imagine, the dog didn't like that too much and I probably started it a little bit. He came at me with full force. With fear in my eyes I'm sure, I turned to run and the dog bit me right on my bum. I'm not sure what really happened, but that's how I remember it. The next thing I remember in this story is sitting in the bath tub with Mom taking care of my wounds.

I had two friends that I remember in the neighborhood. Chris Greenwald and John Stimpson. John was a year older than Chris and I and lived at the south end of the block. Chris just lived across the circle from us, so I spent a lot of time there. Chris and his dad were way into cars. So, I remember learning quite a bit from him about that. They also had an old Macintosh computer. We spent a lot of time playing games on that computer as well. Chris, John and I all loved bikes. John and his dad were really good at fixing bikes. I spent a lot of time at his house fixing our bikes. His house was also really close to what we called the dirt hills. These were a few open lots that had been turned into a BMX mecca. We had little jumps, corners, table tops, and all kinds of trails through these dirt hills. We also had built all kinds of forts and places to hang out in these dirt hills. The dirt hills were also full of stickers, so we spent numerous hours patching holes in our tires.

In John's backyard there was a big sandbox that had all kinds of hidden secrets. We be digging back there and we'd find an old car of action figure that probably had been buried for years by one of his older brothers. His house also backed a few of our other friends. They weren't necessarily our best friends, but we played with Nicholas Kippen and Ty Mansfield quite a bit. Chris' backyard backed some huge corn fields and horse fields. They went about one-half mile up to the next street. If we went through those fields we'd get to Danny Thomas and JC Howe's houses. They were cousins. Danny was a super good basketball player. JC was as well. We went to church with them and played with them on occasion, but because they were further away it wasn't until later in life we really hung out with them other than at church things.

Growing up our neighborhood was surrounded with these fields. We loved it and sometimes overstepped our bounds in them. I'm sure Mom and Dad got a few phone calls from the owners of this land that we'd play in and ride our bikes through. We had all kinds of great adventures in those fields. They don't exist anymore. Those fields are now full of houses and businesses.

Ty Mansfield was one of my cub scout leaders. I remember being over at their house for our scout meeting one afternoon learning about how to chop wood. After Brother Mansfield showed us how to chop wood by cutting in at the angles, it was our turn to try it. The way I recall it, nobody stepped up. So, I volunteered. I felt pretty confident, but was a little nervous. I got going and the wood must have been moving a little, so I put my hand down on the wood to hold it still and chopped right into my pointer finger on my left hand. Mom came and got me and we went to the urgent care to get it stitched up (six stitches if I recall correctly) - at least that's how I told my war story to all of the guys the next day at school and in the following years. I still have the scar on that finger and remember that day often as I think about it. Crazy thing is that the same finger has been cut multiple times through my life. Rarely do I cut other fingers and even more rarely the other hand. Probably because the sharp object is always in my right hand. That finger has been cut in the lawn mower, by numerous different knives and even by the cheese grater on occasion.

That's mostly what I remember growing up. There were two blocks in Wheatridge. They were full of great people. I have stories about most of them and how they influenced my life. That is for another day though. Most of those people have moved on to different neighborhoods. When we go home now, it is a different world. Growing up, the neighborhood was well kept, smelled like fresh cut lawn, grass hay, salt or cow manure - depending on the day. Now, it doesn't really have a smell, unless the wind gets going right blowing in from the Great Salt Lake. Now, the neighborhood seems to have gone down hill a little bit and doesn't have the lively spirit I used to feel growing up. Maybe it was never there, but it sure felt like it as a child, and teenager living in Wheatridge.