This is how will always choose to remember the Oakwood that I grew up in. Memories from my child hood. The neighborhood was so beautiful then. All the beautiful brick homes, many that were hand built by the skilled Italian brick layers who lived in them. All the backyards that had beautiful flower gardens and vegetable gardens with roses, tulips and irises out in front of every home. Within a nice 28 block area we had a bowling alley, a pool hall, several very nice restaurants, a Presbyterian and Catholic church , a soda shop, a jewelry store, a drug store, a barber shop, 3 boat docks off the Rouge river, a clothing store, a second hand store, 2 gas stations with guys in white uniforms who would clean your windows while they filled your gas tank, a doctor’s office ( they even handled emergencies, like when Doctor Fordell put a cast on my broken arm when I fell down from a local crab apple tree and when my brother shoved a bean up his nose and my Mom couldn’t get it out) . There were a couple of neighborhood bars ( the kind where community meetings could be held and where your Dad could stop and grab a cold draft beer on his way home from a hard day’s work and Mom would sometimes even meet him there while we played out front with other kids from our neighborhood. We had a school that even served as a community and recreation center where you knew every kids name because he or she lived near you. We had our own baseball and football teams. We burned trash in the alleys outback of our homes in these wire containers, which was actually a social event that everyone did late in the evening on the same day, especially during the summer because It helped to keep the bugs away while they played Bache ball in the end of our alley. When you went to the grocery store to get food it really meant fresh. With chicken coops out back and a live snail basket at the entrance of the store and when you brought cuts of beef, lamb or pork, the meat was cut right off a carcass right in front of you and neatly wrapped in white paper. That meat was brought over each morning from the local slaughter house that was just a few blocks away on the other side of the rouge bridge. The stores and buildings all had wood floors that were swept with some kind of waxy saw dust that kept them looking shiny and clean. Milk was delivered to your front porch by a guy dressed in white with a big smile who was usually very clean and handsome. I remember waking up on Saturday mornings, eating breakfast and heading out the door to play. Running over to the neighbor’s house, tapping on the door yelling “Can Susie come out to play?” I could hear the voices of kids from all the way down my street doing the same thing, beaconing their playmates to come out and play. All I could think in those days was that life could not get any better than this.
Posted on: Mon, 31 Mar 2014 19:21:40 +0000