The summer day my family moved into our house on North Island View, I was walking a box down the truck ramp and I heard a familiar voice. "Wayne!" I turned and saw my buddy, Mike, in the street sitting on his bike. "You guys are moving in? That's freakin' great!" Mike and I met our 7th-grade year and had become fast friends. When the move-in was finished, Mike introduced me around to the neighborhood crew: McSwain, the Leary brothers - Tim, Pat, and Gannon, Wayne Smith, and the Wynn brothers - Scott and Sean. Eventually, when my oldest friends, Noel and Roel moved into the neighborhood, the crew was complete.
An interesting origin story I was told about the neighborhood was it used to be a pecan orchard owned by the Reinike family. Kim Reinike, our neighbor across the street, was one of the descendants. Many of the streets had women's names, and it was said they were named for his female relatives.
There were other characters in the neighborhood. These included the principal of our Junior High, Mr. Whalen. His presence likely kept our errant behavior below misdemeanor thresholds. Not that he was a ball buster - we all liked him. Our paths crossed frequently when he was on one of his strolls and we were cruising on our bikes. We'd always give him a wave and shout a greeting.
We also had a claim to Stan "the Man" Hogue, the star trumpet player in our high school band. The band geeks in the neighborhood recounted every Stan sighting like they had a brush with royalty.
There was Ricky, a kid with development issues, who constantly plied our streets on his bike. He had the peculiar habit of letting the air out of his tires and asking to borrow a bike pump. We all knew he was different, but it didn't really matter. We just accepted him as another neighborhood kid.
Nicknames didn't seem to be a thing. The only guy I remember who had one was "Catfish". I never knew how he picked it up and it seemed a little rude to ask. Besides, he didn't seem to care for it much, so I always called him by his given name, Steve.
As kids, we saw the neighborhood as our personal playground and we utilized every square foot of it. We were constantly at each other's houses reading the latest comic to drop or checking out the latest Atari cartridge one of us had acquired. One of my favorites was Mike's place. As soon as I walked through the door, Mrs. Thurman would pour me a glass of sweet tea. She always greeted me like she hadn't seen me in months. "Why, hello, Wayne! Have you eaten? Would you like some pizza?" I never got a chance to respond. She'd just shrug her shoulders, smiled her radiant smile, and declared, "I'll make you some pizza!"
One of my first days in the 'hood, we started a game of stickball in the middle of Island View. I was not a gifted athlete and struck out my first at-bat - not a great first impression. Another popular sporting venue was Wayne Smith's backyard. His Dad hosted countless touch football games and was a natural at keeping us boys in line. If your smack talk got unruly, he'd give you a brief admonishment and send you packing.
Caty-corner from our house and across the street was an old abandoned church. With a badly faded roofline and equally faded gray wood facade, the place gave off a creepy vibe. What it had going for it was a large open field out front that I mowed a few times in the 80's version of "Go Fund Me". Mike and I once stood in the middle of that field, attached lit smoke bombs to arrows, and shot them into the air. It was pretty cringe-worthy looking back, but we survived.
Around the corner from us was an old gravel pit that had filled with water. While some of the guys fished it, I never heard of anyone gutsy enough to swim its black murk. Besides, if you wanted to go swimming, the beach was five minutes away on a bike.
The best of the best was a large wooded area in the middle of the 'hood. This was our own Hundred Acre Wood. Criss-crossed with bike trails and ramps, we'd ride them full tilt, sometimes crashing into the tall grass just off the path. We'd get up laughing, dust ourselves off, and have another go. Remnants of old forts and hideouts cobbled together with scavenged materials were everywhere. Some epic rounds of night time hide and seek went down underneath its canopy. It served as our place of refuge, concealing us from patrolling cops after a night of neighborhood mischief. It was also the eternally contested no man's land for bb gun wars and bottle rocket fights.
I wouldn't trade growing up in that neighborhood for anything. Those memories are some of my fondest. However, the inevitable eventually happened. At some point, we biked those trails and jumped those ramps, played football at the Smith's, fired off an entire gross of bottle rockets, and had a legendary game of nighttime hide and seek all for the last time, and none of us knew it was happening.
A different crew is biking up and down Island View these days. Mike's and Noel's families moved away years ago. Even Kim, who'd lived in the house across from us since Hurricane Camille, moved on at some point. The creepy old church was finally torn down after Katrina had her way with it. Even our Hundred Acre Wood is gone - razed to make way for new houses. As much as I'd want to, I can't find that old neighborhood anymore. In that sense, I can't find my way home.
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