oh wow, I can't believe I'll be the first to post! My parent's have lived in the same house for 22 years. They have seem their fair share of neighbors come and go. Next door, the Hobarts were the grandparent couple, the ones who had those little candy dishes set out everywhere. Every spring I would "run away" to the Hobarts' and they would feed me pudding cups and I would "unpack" in their grownup son's old bedroom. On the other side, used to live the Clement's with the meanest dog, Fritzy. He was a little yapper, a little ankle bitter...you didn't get in Fritzy's way. Mrs. Clement's nicknamed my little brother "bootchie" and it stuck...we call him bootchie to this day and he is 18. The Clement's had a daughter that would babysit, she was the kind of girl that would lay out in the backyard during the summer and tan. As a young girl, I idolized her. Across the street lived the Didos'. Thier youngest, Anthony, is my age. We were the best of friends. It was that old tale, we would grow up to get married. But, he's gay. So I guess not. Next to the Didos' lived a family with two sons, my age and my older sister's age. These two boys somehow convinced me one afternoon, when I was around 5, that it would be just hilarious to "flash" oncoming drivers by lifting up my dress everytime someone drove by. My older sister freaked out and told me the police would arrest me. I wouldn't go outside for days I was so scared. A lot of these nighbors have moved on, passed on. My neighborhood will never be the same, but already we see the circle continue. New families are moving in, having babies...the neighborhood is once again filled with little children running around.

Ray and Edna lived next door to us. We were renting a house and Sara was just a baby. They were the neighborhood lookout! Well, Edna was, Ray was legally blind. Ray was retired and they had one grown son who lived with them. They had the scoop on all the neighborhood poo. Ray loved growing roses, in fact, the entire border of his yard was lined in roses. He even was able to transplant cuttings into new bushes.

We lived in a city that had a rule about no signs in the yard - none at all! One of the neighbors had a 3/5 index card in their screen door and Edna knew all about it. Big infraction!

The kicker is, one day I pulled in the driveway and, Edna burst out the door to meet me to tell me that the UPS Man was here today and he left something in my garage. They heck with the police or security systems - retired couples like Ray and Edna were worth their weight in gold!

It's been 20 years since we lived in that house. When Ray passed away we thought the world had lost a beautiful soul!

Hi EsteeLynn ! Love your "take" of your childhood memories in the neighborhood. Wonderful rendition. Here's mine.....

I'm writing about my childhood neighborhood only because I have such vivid memories of it, was a wonderful place.

Well, first of all we moved around quite abit because my father was a salesman for McGraw Hill Book company. His clients were college professors, he dealt with college text books.

When I was 6 to 9 we lived in Chaple Hill, N.C. On Ridge Ln, off of Ghimgoul Rd. Now Ghimgoul Rd. was a rock throw from North Carolina University. The campus abutted the back woods of our neighborhood. The years were 1966-1969. Portests of the Vietnam War were going on, the start of Watergate, the impeachment of Richard Nixon. Hippes Haven all around, he he he.

At the end of Ghimgoul Rd. there was a dirt road about 1/4 of a mile long, which led to Ghimgoul Castle. This was the coolest place ever. To set this up, Ghimgoul Rd. was lined with huge beautiful Gregorian homes. Each yard was impecably landscaped, rose gardens, coy ponds, french wrought iron patio furniture, the occasional tennis court. Some yards were in tiers lined with small stone walls.

Ridge Ln was a small jut down a hill perpendicular to Ghimgoul. It was a dead end. Circle shaped asphalt ending at the bottom of the hill, a cul-de-sac if you will. At the bottom there were three houses surrounding the asphalt circle shaped landing. One sat way down amongst over-grown vined covered trees. The other two were up near the road, were larger homes and inhabitied mostly by older people. One of the houses had a huge petrified piece of tree trunk laying on its side in their front yard. That was soo cool to a 5, 6, 7, 8 year old. Hard as a rock, truly petrified.

At four o'clock every afternoon it was considered "Sherry" time. The elders would sit out on their patios with their small glasses and toast to each other that they made it through another day. Occasionally they would walk around the cul-de-sac on a nice spring day and stop to have conversation with all of the children playing in the neighborhood. One gentleman I remember was Dr. Frank Graham. He took a shining to my youngest brother Matthew who was all of 3? Matthew is 31/2 years younger than I so I was about 6, or 7. He would pull a quarter out of his pocket and ask the children, "If you went to a candy store and purchased 17 cents of candy, gave the clerk a quarter, how much change would you receive back? He always had we small people trying to figure things out, teasing, exercizing our noodles. He was a very smart man. Apparently he was very famous for his achievments, world known, but to a seven year old he was just Dr. Frank.

My family's house was a small ranch, 3 bedroom one floor ranch. It had an enclosed porch on the back and a deck which ran the rest of the length of the house. The backyard sloped down so there was a large stairway leading up to the deck and porch. Many summer afternoons, the deck and stairway became the neighborhood theater. The stage for all of us youngest to do our latest impressions of Spanky and Alfalpha and the rest of the clan. Sometimes we would make up our own little plays. All the parents and the elders would come over, have their sherry and watch our productions.

Across the street lived the Littles. A family of four , Mom, Dad and two girls, I forget their names because I really didn't like the mother, she was a mean woman. The oldest daughter was a year ahead of me and the other daughter was a year younger. I occasionally played with the girls in their yard on their swingset. That ended quickly the day we were at the bus stop. The older one and I got into an argument where she decided to stick her pencil into the underside of my chin. To this day the lead tip remains embedded in my flesh. Ya know that kid sing song of "My mother and you mother were hanging out clothes, my mother punched your mother right in the nose? Well this almost immediately commenced when I ran into the house screaming with pouring blood from my chin. The DONNNELLY'S WERE DONE WITH THE LITTLE'S

Half way up the hill there was a dirt road which ran parallel to Ghimgoul Rd. This was a service road where the trash trucks would run. At each end of the dirt road it turned to connect to the amazing impecable Front street of Ghimgoul Rd. The dirt road ran along one side of our property, continued across Ridge Ln. and abutted the Little's property on the other side of the street. At times we kids would use the road as a short-cut to get to everyone else's homes.

At the beginning of Ghimgoul stood a huge beautiful home. This house belonged to Dr. Wilcox, a heart surgeon, family of 6, wife and four children, three girls Adalayde, Casandra, Melissa, then a boy Ried. Adalayed and Casandra were my friends, Melissa was my brother Matthew's first girlfriend at the tender age of 4.
The mother was illusive to say the least. nearly everyone on Ghimgoul Rd. had a housekeeper. Mrs. Wilcox would lay in bed, bareass all day on satin sheets and bark orders to the housekeeper who watched us constantly. I don't remember the woman's name but it's fair to say it was something like, Cora-Jean, a large buxomy woman of African decent. I would sleep over there at times. "Cora-Jean" would turnout the couch beds in the den and put on college basketball games for us to watch, she would watch the games with us, make large bowls of popcorn, hushpuppies, and break out soda. It was always a goodtime over there. There was never any true adult supervision. Once or twice while sleeping over, somehow someway there would be a disagreement and I would pick myself up and walk home at 1:00 in the morning, enter my own home and go to bed, my parents oblivious to the whole thing. The Wilcox's lived a good length away. I can't imagine my child walking home in the middle of the night and not knowing or even caring that it occurred. Back in the day it was different.

At the other end of Ghimgoul Rd. Stood another large home, with an attached garage and breezeway. It belonged to the Newtons. Mr. and Mrs. thier housekeeper and 5 children. One daughter was my friend Besty. She was a yearolder than I and we got along great. Many memories of sitting under the Mangnolia tree in full blossom reading books about far-away lands and the people who inhabited them. Probably called National Geographic LOL. Betsy's father had been in the military. He once owned an army jeep he had delivered somehow by military plane. It was dropped to the ground from the plane in some back field of a farmer friend. Mr. Newton was a real shifty guy. He always knew how to have fun though. He would load up the kids in the jeep and drive to Duke and he would drive down the concrete bleacher seat blocks in one of their stadiums, only to hear the loud sreams of all of us kids in the backseat. Now remember there were no car seats or seat belts, YOU HAD TO HOLD ON FOR DEAR LIFE!! He was crazy I think. Again I have many happy memories of playing "Kick the Can", "Hide and Go Seek"in their yard. I stayed over one night, I was there for supper where the housekeeper served, and I was instructed on how to eat properly. No elbows on the table, finish what was on your plate whether you liked it or not, oh and of course how to say"Grace". That night when we went to bed "this is the only thing I remember about the whole evening because I was upset", I was told not to breathe into the pillow, Mrs. Newton didn't want to have to strip the bed the next morning. Strange woman that one.

Across the street was a Catholic Church we went to. The backside was about 50 to 75 feet tall because of the way the land sloped down to the adjacent highway. Tiers of parkinglots all the way down. This is where I made my first communion. My mother hand made my a dress for it. All the other girls looked beautiful in their white dresses. Then there was me in my cotton pasteled striped dress with matching handband. No tiara for me. How embarassed I was!! Oh I wanted to crawl under a rock. Everyone had an opinion to express too. Not such a good day.

I mentioned the steep grade because on the side of the church was a concrete sidewalk that ran the length of the church down to the basement floor where CCD classes were held. The sidewalk was a steep grade. But me being 7 thought it was the perfect place to try out my first pair of roller skates. Down the sidewalk I went faster and faster, only to wipe out and leave most of my knees and lower legs embedded in the concrete. Nuns came to the rescue of a screaming bloodied 7 year old. They called my mother and she took me home and nursed my wounds until I could walk again a week later. The skates were trashed that night.

The soil is mostly clay. Alot of our time was spent making clay pots with dirt and water and letting them dry in the sun. We would walk into the woods to find the perfect rock to "offer" our creations to the sun gods. We were so proud of our creations. Only God knows where they are now.

We also would hike to downtown to the pennycandy store, unsupervised, no parental units. it was about 2 miles away!!
We use to go up to the college bookstore and make copies of books we were reading at the time. No worry about copyright infringement, not to a bunch of 7, 8 year olds.

But heres the best for last. We would go to visit Ghimgoul Castle. The property was aligned with orange rock clay, minerals glistened in it. Rust colored striations would adorn the rocks. We made up stories of how the rust colored striations were the blood of fallen Knights of many years ago, and how the minerals that sparkeled were of gems encrusted in rock.

The castle itself is beautiful, at one end stands a tower built of rock which looks like a rook from a chess set. Insde the tower are benches to look over the vast landscape. Inside the castle there were full set of armour which lined the entryway. Halloween was the best. The owners were always very gracious and opened their home to the fasination of the neighborhood kids. They never turned us away, not once.

You can look this up on Google earth!! It shows a picture of the castle. I showed my kids. They grew up with my stories and I don't think they believed me until they saw it for themselves. Is quite the place!! Ghimgoul is spelled maybe w/o the "H" so if you look it up try both spellings, I forget which is correct. When you do find Ghimgoul Rd. in Chaple Hill, N.C. Ridge Road is about half way down. Also try North Carolina University, Univerity of North Carolina.

Anyway there are many other stories to tell, about the General from WWII that lived in the neighborhood, the lawyer's wife who would have only "Real French Maids" to live in her home,one of my friends had an elevator in her house It was just simply a fantasy land for childhood. It was wonderful. I really would love to visit the old neighborhood sometime, I want to show it to my husband. Sorry for the length, I could go on and on... I'll save it for another time. Have a wonderful week Estee!! God Bless Jojo

Wow, Jojo, that's quite a comment!!!!

I'll just relate one instance. We had a family with a couple of teenagers that lived next door to us. They were pretty "rowdy" teens. One night at about one in the morning they were throwing a loud party. My dad went to yell at them to knock it off over the fence and as he's approaching the fence he looks up to see a kid standing on the peak of the roof, completely naked. It was our neighbor. The kid runs down the roof full speed and jumps off, clearing the concrete pool deck and landing in a pool full of surprised people. My dad said it left him pretty much speechless.

Jojo - you should clip all that and use as journal entries and scrap some pages about your old neighborhood!

with nieghbors like your next door from if she doesn`t want to be your friend don`t be hers lol!! well lets see i can remeber when life was much eaiser than it is now i loved going outside and playing with friends but my mom always made sure i called when i got to a friends house or she would tell me you better be there when i call... or you better be home by dark if not you will get a whipping.. and you bette believe i was home by dark lol!!! i remeber too that when my sister and my cousins was young my grandmother would have a garden and she would have us shuck corn in the front yard... that was so much fun... and one time i was at my aunt ethel`s house and her son jimmy told paula thats his oldest sister that he was eating the watemelon rine an wasn`t cause he would hide the watermelon rine under the table and she almost believed him but we all busted out laughing so that gave it away lol!! well i better quit cause i could go on all night on stuff we did when we was kids lol!! but i like sharing tho and thanks for sharing with us :)

Estee,
We live in a great neighborhood now! There are 5 of us stay-at-home moms in a row and during the summer all the kids run from one yard to another and play. And I did get a great friend out of my one neighbor. We are so much alike and our kids are the same ages. And I love where our house is also because we only have woods behind us and nobody across from us :) Perfection if you ask me!

I grew up only 4 house away from my bff in the world and her parents still live there. We have been friends for over 30 years! We didn't really care who else was in the 'hood because we had each other. We had a house we stayed away from though. Creepy John lived there with about 4 non-mobile vehicles and 6 mobile ones. It was weird. He was weird. We never ever rode bike or walked on that side of the road! It is funny the things you remember about when you start thinking about them! Great topic!

Estee...we used to live in a neighborhood like the one you're in now...where everyone kinda keeps to themselves and doesn't have any interest in meeting anyone else. We did however meet this one guy across the street....both Carey and I were introduced to him and wouldn't you know it neither one of us remembered his name....EVER! So he was forever known as "BIG BOY" because he was! Although we pronounced it "Big Booooooyeeeeeee", never to his face of course though. LOL

When I was little we lived in what I call the typical 70's neighborhood with like 25 kids on a culdesac and nobody could drive down the street cuz there was a bike ramp in the middle of it along with numerous bikes strewn about. And usually they all ended up at one person's house and that house was usually ours! We had a "Mrs. Kravitz" in our neighborhood too that kept tabs on everything, her name is Pearl and she's actually still alive and kicking, she's a gem!

Where we live now is on a busy street, you just DON'T play in the front yard for fear of getting run over. On one side our neighbors are super nice on the other side the guy is one taco short of a combo...he chopped down a tree in his yard, it fell into ours and he just left it there! Our neighbors across the street shot each other in the front yard a couple years back right after we moved here (and I don't live in the "hood" if you know what I mean)...that was interesting.

*sigh* They just don't make neighborhoods like they used to!

I grew up in a nice neighborhood in NJ...slowly over my young years all of my friends moved away and all these elderly people moved in. Needless to say I soon grew up without any neighborhood friends! Now my old neighborhood is brimming with young ones...you see all the elderly people either went to nursing homes or passed on. Their homes were bought up by young professional couples moving out of New York for a "quieter" life. Now as I am 33 and living in Ohio...we built our home in a street of 22. I can't say the neighbors aren't friendly..they are...but behind your back they are viscious. So I have learned to mind my own business and keep away from their claws. Sad..for my kids..I would love for them to have friends to play with..

Your next door neighbor doens't know what she's missing by not being your friend! Her loss. Hmmm... I grew up in a not so great neighborhood. So bad that the next door neighbor got arrested for growing pot out in his yard. Not even covered or anything. Just 6 big old pot plants! It violated his probation and he went to jail. Wow huh?

Today I live in a much nicer QUIET neighborhood on a dead-end street. My kids play in the street while I watch them, we wave to our neighbors. I'm not close to any specific neighbor but for the 3 houses across and the two on either side of us we are friendly, and help each other out as needed. One neighbor watches the house and picks up the newspaper while we are on vacation, and I will never forget the other neighbor helping us haul our rotten fridge out of our home and to the trash pile after Hurricane Katrina. That's why I haven't ratted him out to his landlord that he's keeping a huge boxer in a rental home that's supposed to have no pets. LOL

i love your blogs !! great laugh for a monday we had this guy that everyone probally had he was the one that kept your ball if it landed a inch on his grass now this guy lived right across the street from the basball diamond you would think he would have got sick of it and realized he bought a house right across the street from a school with um a diamond we lose a few balls is way always keeping spares he come out shake his fist and take the ball into the house then of course the game went on! then when we where all out of balls it got real ugly because we wanted all of are balls back! some kid would vollenteer to go demand these balls back we always of course picked the most mouthy and brave kid to do so! make matters worse he spoke very little english so always the cops where always called and he would nicely give all the balls back untill the cops left and then he returned to his nasty old self !leaving us with no umm.. balls! this went on every summer!

Here are a few tasty neighbor nuggets from my neck of the woods:
Neighbors who think horns are the same as doorbells only more convenient.
Neighbors who name their dogs after themselves.
Neighbors who use their car as a living room.
The compulsive garden mulcher.
The scream-yodeler.

Come visit me. I dare you.

Estee, I also lived in a "close neighborhood" when I was growing up. We lived on a coul de sac and everyone knew everyone. At Christmas time every house was decorated with lawn displays and lights and whatever. During the 2 weeks prior to Christmas, the Dads would take turns dressing up as Santa each night to greet the cars cruising down our court to see the decorations. There was about 6 of us girls all around the same age (12 to 16)and our Moms made us cute little elf costumes. We would go out and work with Santa, giving out candy to the kids in the cars... except when the big flat bed truck of kids from our school came cruising past, then us "elves" would disappear into the bushes.. I had such a blast in those days. Us kids (and there was about 20 or so of us) would play sports in the street in the summer evenings, hide and seek, kick the can, kick ball, bike races, etc. We'd close down the court on the 4th of July and all the parents would bring out their bar b q's and their picnic tables and lawn chairs for a "block party". All of us kids would get together and put on a "talent show" for the parents...and then the dads would set off fireworks at night. I wish our neighborhood now was like the "good ol days"... We live in a mountainous community so our neighbors aren't RIGHT next door...we usually only "wave" at each other..and ONCE in awhile stop to talk when we run in to each other on our walks...But no one is close as it used to be. Now it's mostly retired folks, or like my dh and I, "newly empty nesters"...most of the kids that did live here have all grown up and moved away...guess it's time for us "ol' folks" to create our own fun! But I'm too busy scrapping away at my desk!

Growing up our neighborhood gossip lived next door to us. We lived in Michigan and she spent winters in Flordia. It was the funniest thing ever when she would return home in the Spring and let us know all the happenings in our neighborhood through the winter. The lady on the other side of us was my sarogate Grandmother. She was the sweetest lady. I haven't been to my old neighborhood in about 8 or 9 years so thanks for taking me on a walk down memory lane.