October 7th, 2011
Best of Both Worlds
I grew up in Dayton, Ohio on the out skirts of the city. It was almost what now a day is called the suburbs, but we had a electric city trolley bus about a block from my house that took us downtown. So counting waiting for the bus and traffic I was only about thirty minutes from main street and all the huge department stores. Driving a car I was there in twenty minutes or less. The area really was a contradiction. City bus to downtown, off the bus and one block away a dirt and gravel road to my house, then two acres of wooded area loaded with mulberries, blackberries, raspberries, poke salad and mushrooms. Walk the path through the woods and you found yourself on the school play ground. Within minutes I was out of the city and into what I called the country.
Less then a mile from my house was the roller rink, bowling alley and on down the road a place we called the Pony Farm where for a few dollars you could ride horses all day. We had a neighborhood mom and pop store where we cashed in our glass cola bottles to buy penny candy and a junk yard (we weren’t supposed to go there) where we managed to find all sorts of interesting things for building projects. My friends and I were forever trying to build cars and airplanes. Dayton, the birth place of the Wright Brothers had a big influence on us. And when we weren’t constructing something to ride we were building forts in the woods. We had clubs, one being the Monkey Club. In order to join you had to climb one of the tall spindly trees and crawl out on one of the limbs until it bent low enough for you to jump to the ground. If you couldn’t do that you grabbed one of the many hanging vines and swung until it started to break and down you came. I don’t recall that any of us ever broke any bones, but there were plenty of scratches and bruises.
By the time I was a teenager a new high school was built within walking distance and a soda shop called the Falcon Inn (school mascot was a falcon) on the same street. I spent many hours at the shop with friends sipping cherry cokes listening to the juke box and trying out the latest dance moves. I didn’t realize it then, but I really did have the best of both worlds.