The Neighborhood

As I have already explained, almost all of the neighbors on Hirondel Street were Catholic. I grew up in the shadow of Our Lady of Mt. Carmel Catholic Church, and it made for some very interesting experiences. Of course, when I was a very young child, I didn’t understand the difference between Catholic or Baptist or Methodist or atheist, nor did I care. It seemed that every family went to some church on Sunday, and we were all united in faith simply because we all went to church every week.

As children in the early 1960's, we all understood the concept of "wardrobe", too. We all had three sets of clothes. There were church clothes, which were reserved strictly for Sundays, weddings, or whatever other function our mothers deemed "proper". There were school clothes, which were slightly less dressy than church clothes and, if you were a girl, always meant dresses. And then there were play clothes: jeans with button-front flys for the boys, shorts and pedal pushers with side zippers for the girls, and pullover tee shirts. We could run and play and ride bikes and just generally be kids in our play clothes without fear of scolding.

On our street there were scores of children to play with. Each yard came equipped with swing sets and sandboxes and water hoses for free drinks of water. We played wonderful games in the warm summer evenings like “hide and seek” and “freeze tag.” We caught lightning bugs in old mayonnaise jars and stayed out until the street lights blinked on at dark and our mothers called us in for the night. The ice cream truck made regular forays up and down the streets of Overbrook every afternoon. We could hear the calliope music tinkling merrily from two blocks over, which gave us plenty of time to race home and barrel through the house, shouting, "Can I have a nickel?!?"

No, theology made very little difference to the children on Hirondel street. But I always felt a clear separation from my neighborhood playmates anyway, because from the very beginning, I understood that in all those other homes on our street there were many, many children, and in our home there was just one: me.

My first real memory of a friend who was not a cousin (we’ll cover the whole family issue later) was a little girl named Eileen who lived down the street from me. Eileen and I went to kindergarten together at the public elementary school in Garden Villas. What I didn’t know at the time was that while Our Lady of Mt. Carmel had its own school for grades 1 through 12, it did not have a kindergarten, and so the Catholic families often availed themselves of the "free" public kindergarten in the next neighborhood before subjecting their children to the iron will of the nuns at Mt. Carmel for the following 12 years. Of course, the Catholic families all had to pay property taxes which supported the public schools, so the "free" public kindergarten wasn't really free for them at all. In addition, they then had to pay tuition for their children to attend the private Catholic school at Mt. Carmel. I do have some vague memories of adult grumblings along these lines, but as a child, I never paid them any attention.

All I knew was that Eileen and I laid down side by side on our little red and green plastic mats to take a nap each day at kindergarten (we only went for half a day-—did we really need a nap?), and we drank our juice and ate our cookies together, and we eventually discovered that we lived just 4 houses apart on Hirondel street.

I’ll never forget the terror and fear I felt each time I stepped foot in Eileen’s house. Eileen was the youngest of thirteen brothers and sisters. Her house was as foreign to me as Mars or Venus. The first thing I saw when I walked through the door was a horrifying, very real-looking crucifix of Jesus, bloody, torn, and naked, hanging on the living room wall. I was shocked. In the Baptist church we didn't have images of bloody Jesus. We had pastoral Jesus tending his "flock" of sweet, smiling children leaning against his knee. Bloody Jesus scared me.

But even worse than Jesus dying on the cross right over our heads while we sat on the floor and played jacks, were Eileen's five terrifying older brothers. Like birds of prey, they could swoop down on you at any given minute and pull your hair or steal your toy or say something mean and unintelligible (but even a five-year old could understand that they were making a joke at her expense). She also had hordes of older sisters, some of whom were nice, but they were all so loud and rambunctious and independent of one another. It was quite overwhelming for an only child who lived in a quiet house with only her parents for company.

I rarely remember seeing Eileen’s mother. I have a vague memory of a thin, weary-looking woman standing at the sink washing dishes. Her hands were very red and cracked-looking to me, as if they spent too much time immersed in hot soapy water. However, I never saw her dressed in anything other than heels and hose. Shades of Donna Reed and June Cleaver! If you thought those women were just Hollywood make-believe, think again. They really existed in Houston, Texas in 1962.

I only remember seeing her father once. Fathers disappeared from our neighborhood early in the mornings and reappeared at suppertime every evening. On the weekends they mowed the grass on Saturday mornings and hung out in their garages on Saturday afternoons drinking cold, sweaty dark brown bottles of beer. Occasionally, they barbecued and once in a great while, they played a game of ball with us. So all fathers, except for my own, were pretty much an unknown quantity to me, and Eileen's father absolutely terrified me. I don’t remember what the joke was, but I distinctly remember him saying (in a jovial manner, I am sure), that he would “string me up by my thumbs”. I took him quite literally and hid from him every time I saw him after that.

At Eileen’s house they didn’t have a regular kitchen table and chairs, as we did. They had a picnic table with long benches on either side. Imagine trying to feed 15 people at a time, 7 days a week, three times a day. You have to remember that in the early sixties, there were no McDonalds. No wonder Eileen’s mom had dish pan hands. I only remember having dinner with them once, but I’m sure I didn’t eat a bite. I was too shy around all of them.

One last memory, before I leave Eileen. It was common for the mothers in our neighborhood to feed “snack” to whatever youngsters happened to be around each afternoon. Most of the mothers during that time period stayed home, and so we were treated to homemade cookies and cupcakes, hand-squeezed lemonade, and even homemade ice cream wasn’t uncommon. But at Eileen’s house, when it was time for snack, we always got a big bowl of ice cubes. Just plain ice cubes. I remember asking my mother about why we didn’t get popsicles or cookies at Eileen’s house. She told me that not everyone had enough money to go around, and that we should always be grateful for the things that we had. It was my first glimpse into “working class” poverty, and I never forgot it.

Well, all my friendships always seem to come to an end, and so it was with Eileen. Kindergarten ended and we turned six years old. The next fall Eileen disappeared into the rabbit warren of Our Lady of Mt. Carmel, and I went off to first grade at Garden Villas Elementary school. And although we lived on the same street together for the next several years, our friendship never renewed. Our lives became too different and we were too young.