The Neighborhood
Quote from admin on August 24, 2024, 9:01 pmMy two brother and I grew up on the far northern outskirts of Seattle in the 50's which at that time was country rural - forests everywhere, still some dirt roads, houses on huge acre+ lots. We'd play on the ice of frozen ponds in the winter. Build secret camps in the wood tracts that were everywhere. Take off on our bikes, in those seemingly safer more carefree times and be gone all day till dinner. Picking cherries from one of the trees in our big back yard to sell around the neighborhood for 25 cents a basket. I made $6 one summer - a fortune for a kid!
Then one day we kids heard a loud noise coming from down the street in the woods. We snuck in to see a huge bulldozer smashing down the beautiful evergreen trees, burying the rocks we used as forts, erasing the old cowboy wagon trail. Within a few days that forest area - probably about 20 acres - had been shockingly cleared, the broken trees piled up in great, smoldering heaps. Little did we know this was the opening shot of the cannon that would forever blast away our Tom Sawyer-like childhood. As Seattle stretched and grew in all directions - out to the waters' edge, racing towards the Cascade Mts., spilling to the north and south, all those irreplaceable pockets of woods began to fall to the house builders. We watched with a combination of fascination and unease as developments sprang up everywhere around us, new families moved in, schools were built to teach the children. Some of our neighbors with acre sized back yards even sold those off to see a half a dozen new homes squeezed in - the new view from their back windows.
Going back there today, every available square foot of our old neighborhood is spoken for either with a house, an apartment block, concrete sidewalks, a strip mall or widened highway. The Seattle I remembered more as a sleepy nearby town we would sometime visit was now a sprawling metropolis of literally millions. But no one can take away those precious childhood memories - the endless summers of Kool-Aid stands, digging tunnels in the back yard, climbing trees, catching polywogs in some nearby swamp, the stars we looked up to see laying out on the lawn at night. Or was it some long dream?
My two brother and I grew up on the far northern outskirts of Seattle in the 50's which at that time was country rural - forests everywhere, still some dirt roads, houses on huge acre+ lots. We'd play on the ice of frozen ponds in the winter. Build secret camps in the wood tracts that were everywhere. Take off on our bikes, in those seemingly safer more carefree times and be gone all day till dinner. Picking cherries from one of the trees in our big back yard to sell around the neighborhood for 25 cents a basket. I made $6 one summer - a fortune for a kid!
Then one day we kids heard a loud noise coming from down the street in the woods. We snuck in to see a huge bulldozer smashing down the beautiful evergreen trees, burying the rocks we used as forts, erasing the old cowboy wagon trail. Within a few days that forest area - probably about 20 acres - had been shockingly cleared, the broken trees piled up in great, smoldering heaps. Little did we know this was the opening shot of the cannon that would forever blast away our Tom Sawyer-like childhood. As Seattle stretched and grew in all directions - out to the waters' edge, racing towards the Cascade Mts., spilling to the north and south, all those irreplaceable pockets of woods began to fall to the house builders. We watched with a combination of fascination and unease as developments sprang up everywhere around us, new families moved in, schools were built to teach the children. Some of our neighbors with acre sized back yards even sold those off to see a half a dozen new homes squeezed in - the new view from their back windows.
Going back there today, every available square foot of our old neighborhood is spoken for either with a house, an apartment block, concrete sidewalks, a strip mall or widened highway. The Seattle I remembered more as a sleepy nearby town we would sometime visit was now a sprawling metropolis of literally millions. But no one can take away those precious childhood memories - the endless summers of Kool-Aid stands, digging tunnels in the back yard, climbing trees, catching polywogs in some nearby swamp, the stars we looked up to see laying out on the lawn at night. Or was it some long dream?
Quote from sandyshorts on August 30, 2024, 10:51 pmSounds like you had a fun childhood.
Sounds like you had a fun childhood.