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Nostalgia January 2017

Sam's Side

Reflections of My Neighborhood

By Sam Beeson

My cars were generally measured in miles per breakdown instead of miles per gallon. They were kept on the road mainly through the “Let’s fix it with rope and duct tape” abilities of my father, and sheer will power from me. But my girlfriend didn’t seem to mind these rolling death traps.

While watching TV the other night with my son, we heard the distinctive POP-POP-POP of gunfire in our neighborhood, probably less than a street or two away.

“Gunshots?” my son asked.

“Yep,” I replied nonchalantly.

We went back to watching TV.

What might cause other families to barricade in place while dialing 911, is simply treated as a routine phenomenon in my neighborhood, barely worthy of interrupting our TV show.

I live on the boundary – a neighborhood that is neither good, nor bad but borders both extremes. Sometimes the mayhem of one will slip over into the peacefulness of the other, with us caught in between. Most nights, (and days for that matter) we enjoy a fairly peaceful environment, a benefit from living near the “nice” area.

Other nights, there are gunshots, sirens and police helicopters, the bad part of living near the “rough” area.

Yet strangely, it all sounds like home.

This hit me the other day when I was gassing up my car, late at night, in that bad neighborhood. As I am standing there pumping gas with the mild unease that you might expect when you are in a large city’s rougher area, a man came up behind me.

He caught me completely off guard. Usually I pride myself with believing that I am aware of my surroundings at all times, a by-product of growing up in this area. But fortunately, the gentleman was only asking for directions.

After helping him, he turned to walk away but stopped briefly and asked, “What happened to this area?”

“It got lived in,” I replied simply.

That’s when I realized that the neighborhood I grew up in was still very much a part of me.

Less than a mile away from this very gas station is the last house that I lived in with my parents before I got married. In order to help with my college expenses, I had a night job. I remember driving home from this job late one night and stopping at the same intersection where I was now pumping gas. Nowadays this is a large intersection but back then it was simply a four-way stop. So there I was in the early morning, dog-tired after going to school all day and working all night, stopped at a stop sign and patiently waiting for it to turn green! When I finally realized that this stop sign was never going to change color, I still had to talk my way through it.

A mile up the road in the other direction is the high school that I attended. Many of the closest friends I have to this day are friends that I met at that high school. The school now has a reputation of being bad (and had one back then too), but I have nothing but good memories of my time there.

Across the street from that high school lived my girlfriend. I would pick her up in one of my fleet of cars that were always on the verge of catastrophic mechanical failure. My cars were generally measured in miles per breakdown instead of miles per gallon. They were kept on the road mainly through the “Let’s fix it with rope and duct tape” abilities of my father, and sheer will power from me. But my girlfriend didn’t seem to mind these rolling death traps. In fact, one of my car’s horns would honk every time I turned left. Some teenage girls might drop a boyfriend faster than first-period French with a car like that. But my girlfriend thought it was the funniest thing she had ever seen. I knew she was special at that moment. So much so, that I ended up marrying her.

So I married my wife in this neighborhood. We raised our son in this neighborhood. I sat with my mother and father as they passed away in this neighborhood. There are very few significant life events that have happened to me that did not take place in this very same neighborhood.

I realized then that I am very much a reflection of this area. I have good parts…and bad parts. A little refined here, and a bit rough around the edges there. So when this gentleman who approached me late at night in MY neighborhood and expressed some disgust at what it had become, I felt a little slighted. Because in spite of all the changes, it still feels like home.

 

You can reach me at This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. , or follow me on Twitter @samiambeeson.

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