I had three names for my personal journals. Ramblings was one, Mad Mother From Brooklyn was the second and Hello Friend, the third.
I’d like to share a piece I wrote to myself in my third journal. I was pretending to write an imaginary audience. Yes, I have been practicing talking to an audience since I accepted my first Academy Award in second grade.
I’d love for you to play along with this one:
Hello Friend!
What I want to know is where you came from. So tell me … where was the street where you lived? Was it in an urban sprawl with kids happily running in and out of traffic or jumping over fire hydrants? Did you play Johnny on the Pony? Or was it one of the many suburbs of the urban sprawl?
Did you live in a back woods area in the mountains, or on a river bank, was it an isolated farm or a small town along the main highway? Did you and your friends sneak out and ride your bikes to a forbidden quarry or local lake to skinny dip? In rural Kansas or high in the mountains of Idaho or Montana; or on the banks of the great Mississippi!
I want to see and smell and feel how it was to grow up on the street where you lived. Think about your childhood and capture one moment … one moment when the curtain moved and you saw how great this crazy life can be!
Looking back to
Go forward with,
fOIS
Click on the photographs for beautiful sights in Brooklyn's Sunset Park and the Sawtooth mountains of Idaho.
fOISinTheCity 
I lived on Sun Valley Road in Naperville, Ill. A quite suburb about 30 minutes drive from Chicago. In winter my mother would wrap me in a warm jacket, plop a hat on my head, tie my mittens on and send me out the door, off to explore the snow drifts that would surround our house. I would climb Mt. Everest or search for Yeti’s. When my toes became to cold and my fingers numb I would enter into the warmth of our home. Smiling to myself I would think of my next adventure while eating cottage cheese and ritz crackers.
LikeLike
Laura, that is such a wonderful memory. What a beautiful place to grow up.
Thanks for stopping by. Have a great day 🙂
LikeLike
I lived on an idyllic, maple-lined street in a beautiful New England college town. It had white clapboard houses with manicured lawns, front porches and kids playing baseball in the summer streets.
And a friendly neighborhood child molestor. He was a rabid anti-Communist who threatened all of us kids with turning our parents over to McCarthy’s HUAC if we told. He said all college professors were “Communists and fairies” and our parents would “fry like the Rosenbergs” if we didn’t let him rape us.
He taught me everything I’ve ever needed to know about the political right.
LikeLike
There are vermin everywhere preying on little innocents. The best revenge is not just to survive them, but to rise above in spite of them. This you have done well.
In spite of the neighbor, it sounds like a beautiful place.
Thanks, Anne. I always love when you visit.
LikeLike
I had a fabulous childhood on a leafy street in Portland, Oregon, not far from where I now live. Everyone always says that people with bad childhoods make the best writers, but too bad–I loved growing up in Portland before it was hip. We lived outside all summer, took long road trips to see relatives in California and Seattle, and spent hours acting out beauty pageants (very un-PC). By the way, Sun Valley, in the Sawtooths, is one of my favorite places on earth!
LikeLike
Thanks so much Charlotte, it is indeed a myth that the only good writing comes from struggle.
Where you grew up sounds so peaceful and scenic. I’m glad I chose the Sawtooth mountains, not even knowing anyone but one friend was familiar.
Portland, Oregon is also becoming or already is, the book capital of the country. One of the women in my book club has a daughter who lives there and she loves to spend days on end in the many book stores there.
I have never been, but when people tell me about where they lived, I can imagine what it must be like.
I enjoy Wordstrumpet. I think I found you and your site on RWA-WF chapter. Thanks again for taking the time to tell me about “the street where you live.”
LikeLike