Gregory Freeman: Old Neighborhood Is Creating New Memories For Others. P-D 2/5/1998

Headline: OLD NEIGHBORHOOD IS CREATING NEW MEMORIES FOR OTHERS
Reporter: By Gregory Freeman

Publication: ST. LOUIS POST-DISPATCH
Last Printed: Thur., Feb. 5, 1998
Section: METRO, Page: B1, Edition: FIVE STAR LIFT

Going home again

I stopped by my old apartment building the other day.
   Actually, it's not my apartment building. I never owned it. But I lived there 34 years ago.
   From 1960 until 1964, my family lived at 5452 A Wells Avenue, at the corner of Belt Avenue. The building's in northwest St. Louis.
It's rare that I get through that neighborhood. I no longer know anyone who lives there. And it's not on my usual path to anywhere. But, with a few minutes to kill and finding myself nearby, I drove through the area.
   Sadly, it's not the neighborhood I remember.

But the building brought back memories.
   I was 4 years old when we moved in, and I was 8 when we moved out, after my parents bought a house. You wouldn't think an 8-year-old would have that many memories, but a flood of them came over me.
   I remembered the time, shortly after my younger sister was born, that I invited my mother to bite my sister's toe. I think I was having a jealously attack at the time (and not an attack of cannibalism).
   I thought about the time a so-called friend invited me to come outside and play one snowy day - and then proceeded to hit me in the face with a snowball wrapped around a big block of ice. I'll never forget the tears and bloody nose that followed.
   I recalled how hot it would get in the days before air conditioning, how we had a rotating, black metal fan that we kept in the living room - and how somehow that managed to keep us cool.
   I remembered playing in front of the apartment building with kids from the neighborhood, childhood games like marbles, hide and seek, "Mother May I" and "The Devil and the Pitchfork."

As I drove by, I noticed that the building had apparently caught fire some time ago. It's boarded up now.
   But it was still the same building I remembered, the one with a huge furnace in the basement that men with muscles like baseballs would stoke with coal.
   As I drove through the neighborhood, I passed the old corner delicatessen. It was once owned by a nice old Jewish couple who spoke with an accent. They were the first people I ever heard speaking English with an accent, and I recalled being fascinated by their speech.
   I also remembered the great aroma of meat and spices that would come from that store. It was dark inside with a tin ceiling, I recalled. But the smells were great, and my mother would pick up all sorts of cold cuts from there that we'd snack on during the week.
   The old delicatessen had apparently become a confectionery later. Like our apartment building, I found it, too, boarded up.

I was disheartened to see all of the buildings that were boarded up or had been torn down. Whole blocks that once were filled with houses and apartment buildings had been cleared out.
A corner Laundromat had become a storefront church. A favorite corner store that had stocked my favorite penny candies and had sold Kas potato chips for a nickel had been torn down.
This was no longer the neat and tidy neighborhood that I remembered as a child.

Still, there were signs of new life.
   Scaffolding was up on the side of our old building, and clearly someone was at work, presumably trying to renovate it.
   Another old building that I think had once been a home for nuns had been replaced by a new building for senior citizens.
   A few houses had been renovated, actually looking better now than they had when I was a child.

I saw children laughing and playing in the neighborhood. And while they may not have been playing marbles, or "Mother May I, " or any of the other games that I experienced as a child, they still appeared to be enjoying themselves.
Surely, some 30 years from now, they'll look back fondly on their experiences here. And though they'll certainly be much different than mine were, they'll still remember the good times - and the bad - that they experienced here.

And life in the neighborhood will surely go on, ever constant, yet constantly changing.
I guess you can go home again - but you can be sure that things will be different.

Daniel Schesch - Webweaver

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