2024, History, home, Kids, Uncategorized

Good Friends

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When we moved to our neighborhood in 1988, it felt as though we had moved to and outpost of the Czech Republic. The Karskys, the Knopiks, the Kovash family, and the Dvoraks all lived next door or across the street. They were all somehow related to one another. Mrs. Karsky described us as “a nice young couple with a young son” to the other neighbors, information she had got from our real estate agent. Everyone was excited when we moved in, as most of the people on the block were older and/or retired. There were no children on the block.

36 years later, we are the older people on the block happy to see new and younger faces in the neighborhood. Only the Knopiks remain as the Czech contingent. There are lots of young children, especially on our side of the street. A couple of houses south of us lives a hard working family from Zimbabwe. They have a teenager who walks back and forth past our house most days during the school year to get to the Catholic High School, as well as several younger daughters and a young son who are friends with the Hispanic family on the corner. The other day I was driving past those houses when I saw the three Hispanic little girls, their brother, and all the Zimbabwe children sitting in a row on the curb. They had exhausted themselves in the enormous jumper house that the Hispanic dad had inflated for them all to bounce around in.

We share surplus garden vegetables with the neighbors, and everyone gets along. It is so nice to see the neighborhood continue to be a haven for young families and for the more mature, longer term residents.

What was your neighborhood like to grow up in? Any “bad apples” or nice grandparent-types as neighbors? Who were your best childhood friends?

19 thoughts on “Good Friends”

  1. Rise and Shine, Baboons,

    I grew up in a neighborhood full of kids my age, and younger. It did not hurt that one family in the neighborhood had 7 children. The setting was somewhat idyllic, for an area next to a cornfield blasted by the windy NW Iowa climate. In the summer we ran most of the day, playing games and sitting at a card table playing cards. Most of the kids and parents were kind people. But there is always a “Queen Bee” who creates the rules and sets the tone. Ours was Debbie. She had a few sharp edges that became a social negative in high school.

    This weekend I get together with the High School friends at Lake Okoboji in North west Iowa. It should be fun. Debbie is not invited. Our group is now 70-71 years old. One person, Joliene died in 2011 or 12. Diane is now in a nursing home. Mary Kay is coming from Washington DC, Carol from Georgia, Deb from Omaha, me from the Twin Citiies, and Ruth, from Iowa City is hosting us. Joanie and Denise still live in the area of our home town. These “girls” were my elementary and high school friends. I have know Deb and Denise since second grade and Mary Kay since third grade.

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  2. My neighborhood in St. Louis Park was “baby boomer central.” Lots of kids on each block We didn’t know everyone on our block, and we had one grumpy old man who didn’t allow us to play on his “perfect” lawn.

    The kids always found each other every summer day and we’d play whatever the “game du jour” was that day. Most moms were stay at homes, so there was always a parent around to bandage an owie or scold us for climbing too high in the trees.

    I didn’t have “a” best friend, just lots of sports buddies I mostly hung out with in the larger neighborhood–within 6-8 blocks of my house. Haven’t kept in touch with any of them.

    I’m so glad I grew up when and where I did. I feel incredibly sorry for kids these days because they don’t have the freedom we had, and we didn’t have a tenth the stresses they experience–mostly thanks to social media, cell phones, computers, and mass shootings in schools. True, we had duck and cover drills for nukes, but that never happened. School shootings are all too common and a real danger that every kid must worry about deep down, if not openly.

    Chris in Owatonna

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  3. The place I lived the longest (ages 6-10) was full of kids, and I remember playing hopscotch and jumping rope, riding our bikes down the sidewalk and around the mulberry tree on the corner, climbing the mulberry tree… I could walk the three blocks to school and came home for lunch. We also played at the school playground “after hours”.

    My best friend Sandy lived right across the tracks (there weren’t many trains). I’ve told before about playing Roy Rogers with her and our sisters – I was Dale Evans.

    There was a kind older couple next door, I remember having dessert with them on their porch. And there was a British family with girls a little older, Anita and Yvonne – when their older sister got married, my little sis got to be flower girl, and I tasted tea for the first time at the reception.

    Thanks for the questions provoking these memories, Renee.

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  4. The block where I grew up was comprised of houses all built in the first two or three years of the 1950s and the families were made up almost entirely of couples who had married just after WWII and started having children in the late ‘40s and early ‘50s. Not only was there a pack of available playmates, the adults all interacted, partying together and once a year holding a block picnic. I have a couple of photos gleaned from my parents’ albums, one showing the whole group of adults grouped for a party and another showing them on a hay ride. I’ve never, as an adult, lived in a place where all the neighbors were so compatible. It seems really special. From a distance of about 65 years, I can look at the photo and identify all the couples, knowing that they eventually dispersed to other houses in other places. Of course they’re all gone now.

    My parents lived on the same block all through their 60 years of marriage. Their original house, next door to the house they built when I was in high school, was raised onto wheels and rolled away one night. I don’t know where it ended up.

    Toward the end of their lives, when I would visit my parents on the block where I grew up, I would often survey the houses on both sides of the street and recall the original families that resided there. Those are the names I still attach to the houses, though the present inhabitants of any of those houses would not recognize those names. It’s a ghostly sort of feeling.

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  5. The woods were our neighbors. But old Charlie had his cabin 1/4 mile up the road. He was only there in the gardening season and hunting season. Closet neighbors to east and north were 3/4 mile away. To south a mile away. The west several miles. I did play with a few boys to the east when I did not have to work, which was it often.
    It was a perfect situation for my parents. I realize now that with my ADD it was wrong for me, but I did so much love the woods, all those hundreds of acres that were mine to roam.
    Clyde

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  6. We had Mrs. Schoon next door, who was always a nice grandma type, as well as Mrs. Schumacher on the other side. I would stay with her sometimes when my parents were working late.

    There was a real aggressive Jack Russell type dog named Sparky who chased us whenever we biked past his house. My best friend Becky lived just kittycorner from us.

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  7. I don’t know all the neighbors here – there are just some who seem to have no interest, which baffles me. But I just realized the new-ish folks on the corner have four CHICKENS – I went out to try and find the bird making that squawking noise.
    Now I have something to talk to them about then I see them – I’ve always wanted back yard chickens!

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  8. My kids grew up in a good neighborhood, on the north shore drive, but the old highway ran behind us, a safe place to ride bikes and run. A sweet old Norwegian lady who gave them cookies and lemonade. Several old people to be around so from an early age they were at ease with and attracted to the elderly and still are. A retired woman who lived in town had a cabin across the road with her own private cove on Superior of which we had full use. Not many kids around but playmates were found elsewhere and often stayed overnight. In teen years our small house became a refuge for friends with difficult home life.
    Clyde
    BTW this is the day of our 59th anniversary.

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  9. A car was tearing along two of the busiest streets here past me and then ahead of me, weaving between lanes, racing when it could, never really get that much ahead as happens in traffic. The vanity place said SLWBOAT.
    Clyde

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  10. Lot of my childhood neighborhood memories are fleeting because we moved around so much. I was rarely in a house more than one summer most of the time I was growing up.

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