My childhood memories all revolve around the first home my parents
ever owned, 50 Hartwell Avenue, Salt Lake City, Utah. Hartwell Avenue, a short street running from Main Street to
West Temple between 21st South and Grove Avenue was lined with small one story
brick houses with tiny attached yards.
Most of the families living in these small brick homes were socially
mobile middle class couples with large families. The street swarmed with children. And these children composed a solid peer group unified
against the world. Anyone walking
through the street when school was not in session would have seen groups of
small girls playing hopscotch on the sidewalks and small boys absorbed in
marble games in the street.
Our neighborhood was marked by the boundaries of the McKinley Ward,
the old farmer's ward. Although
groups of children from different streets on occasion fought battles with
rubber guns, their hostility was muted by the fact that all attended the same
elementary school, McKinley Elementary on State Street, and belonged to the
same Mormon ward. Many of our
school teachers taught in Sunday School and Primary. We lived in a harmonious Mormon neighborhood in which the
values of the home, the Church, the neighborhood, and the school were the same.
The world of my childhood stretched on the west to the Jordan
River. At that time there were
large open fields and farms from West Temple Street to the River. On the east the world was bounded by
State Street. On the south, the
boundary line was a canal running along 21st South filled with carp, suckers,
and an occasional trout.
Seventeenth south was the northern boundary.
A large section of vacant land on the north side of 21st South
between State and Main street was our major playground. Here some luckless contractor had
excavated just before the depression a long series of cellar holes for houses
that were never built. The cellars
were used as bunkers during rubber gun wars. Several roofed over with scrap lumber and tar paper served
as hangouts. Small roads
honeycombed the walls of others where children played with cars and
trucks. We raced bicycles up and
down others with semi-collapsed walls and slid down them in winter with our
sleds. The area was perfect for
snow fights, sliding, and other winter activities.
As I and my friends became older, we roamed the fields and farms
toward the Jordan River. We fished
in irrigation canals and watched rodents and birds. We never committed acts of vandalism on the farms and the
farmers paid little attention to our presence. Even today, I remember the field squirrels, the quail, the
pheasants, and the meadow larks.
The call of the meadow lark, now so seldom heard in Salt Lake Valley,
always brings back memories of my childhood.
Our games were rather simple and inexpensive. Apart from the rubber gun wars of the
warmer months, marbles absorbed our attention during the daylight hours. Almost every afternoon after school,
groups of boys could be observed drawing circles on the road, placing marbles
in the center, and then crouching down to shoot at them with other marbles. Each player kept all the marbles he
knocked out of the ring. Boys
saved up their pennies to buy marbles, and the boy with the largest collection
of marbles gained considerable prestige.
I was never very good at knocking marbles out of the ring, but more than
held my own at tossing marbles into small holes containing other marbles. One reason for my prowess was a
constant supply of large steel ball-bearings provided by my father.
Our street was filled with life in contrast to the empty urban
streets of today. Early in the
morning, we awakened to the clop, clop of horse drawn milk wagons slowly
passing down the streets as the milk man visited each home. He was followed by horse drawn bakery
carts. The bakery man with his largess
of broken cookies was popular in the neighborhood and enjoyed a constant
retinue of children. Another
popular figure was the ice man who also made his rounds with his ice cart
pulled by horses. There were
always chips of ice for the neighborhood children. In the late afternoon tinkling bells announced the coming of
hand pushed ice cream carts. Their
sound sent children into their homes to secure nickels and dimes.
At least once a month, the panpipe man came down the street playing
panpipes and pushing his wheelbarrow with its mounted emery wheel. He stopped whenever a housewife came
out with knives or scissors to be sharpened. We gathered around to watch the sparks fly. At least once a month, the hurdy gurdy
man with his portable organ and begging monkey came down the sidewalk. Attracting a circle of onlookers, he
stopped, played his portable organ, and sent his gaudily garbed monkey, holding
a tin cup to solicit offerings from the audience. Farm boys were constantly stopping their wagons and carts to
sell produce and fruits, and many peddlers came down the street calling out their
wares. Quite often tramps and
beggars passed down our street to beg from house to house. These strange and alien creatures
frequently suffered a shower of rocks.
In summary, our neighborhood was alive, vibrant, fascinating, and
totally safe at all hours of the night and day.
McKinley Elementary School, a large three story building with worn
steps, was the neighborhood school.
We rather liked going to school.
We knew the teachers intimately.
Discipline problems seldom existed. Many of the teachers lived in the neighborhoods, and others
were active in church organizations.
Problems that arose were settled by the teachers calling parents whom
they knew as neighbors and ward members.
School plays, athletic events, and classroom competition were an important
source of neighborhood recreation.
I enjoyed my classes and did very well in reading, history, and the
biological sciences and poorly in math.
As I recall we were required to memorize an inordinate amount of poetry,
dates, names, formulas, and equations.
A year or so before we moved from the area, part of our school
burned down. The upper grades were
transferred to the newly built South High School a few blocks up State Street. We younger boys were often teased by
the high school boys. On one cold
snowy day, we exacted our revenge.
During recess we built snow forts in front of the major entrances and
piled up a large number of iced snowballs, many containing sand and small
rocks. At noon when the high
school students surged out, they were met by a barrage of snowballs driving
them back inside. Time after time
they charged our forts to no avail.
As the noon period ended, we suddenly vanished and could not be
found. As punishment, we were
confined to a small portion of the building. I imagine that South High School heaved a collective sigh of
relief when we went back to our own school.
Our family life was quite happy at 50 Hartwell Avenue. My parents after the supper dishes were
washed, gathered their children around the kitchen table and helped them with
their homework. Both my parents
loved to read and read often to their children. Even though money was scarce, my parents subscribed to
numerous magazines and bought many books.
Once a week, my mother gathered her children together, caught the
trolley, and took us to the public library. Each of us who could read had a card and we returned home
loaded with a week's reading material.
Although my father was gone much of the time on highway commission
assignments, he often took me with him on nearby trips. I remember riding in the cab of a large
rotary snowplow making its way up Parley's Canyon. The operator let me work the lever that controlled the
emission of large plumes of snow to either side of the road. Another time, I went with my father to
inspect extensive flood damage on the roads of Davis County. I still have memories of the mud, rock,
and gravel slides extending from the hills across the fields and through the
orchards. I often rode in the back
of a state truck with highway workers who taught me to throw rocks at telephone
posts. I developed such prowess
that my parents were often visited by irate neighbors whose children had
suffered from my expertise.
Each summer, my parents loaded their children into a large touring car
with canvas flaps, and off we traveled to visit national parks or to go with my
father as he inspected road construction around the Rocky Mountain West. I still have memories in Yellowstone
park of bears rising up against the side of the car to beg for cookies and my
ambivalent attitude toward geysers and hot pots. Once at the Grand Canyon, a ranger promised me that if I
caught a fawn I could take it home.
So early one morning, I carefully arose, dressed and sneaked out to
catch a fawn in the herd of deer that fed close to the lodge. My mother observed my movements among
the deer called the rangers. I
could not understand my mother's anxiety as she explained that the fawn's
mother and father might hurt me if I tried to catch their baby.
My childhood at 50 Hartwell Avenue was quite happy. I was well integrated into the
neighborhood peer groups, the school, and the church. Our small neighborhood was a safe world for children to grow
up in; free from drugs, delinquency, unsafe streets, alienation, or cultural
conflicts.
No comments:
Post a Comment