Growing Up

My Uncle Randy wrote this poem. It brought back fond memories of Grandma & Grandpa's Victorian style brick house. Playing with siblings and cousins in the huge lilac bush's and tree's that surrounded it.

Growing Up

By Randy N. Simmons

Growing up during the 1950's

The world was different than it had ever been before.

I thought it was the way it had always been

because it was the world I knew.

I grew up on Birch Street

But I don't know if it even had a name then.

Probably it did.

The high brick house stood on the corner

Tall, dark and surrounded by massive trees

That dropped there shade like a funeral pall

Encompassing the house and yard

Bounded by a double row of thick green lilacs

growing taller than five of me.

A giant snowball bush thrust up

in the middle of the green grass

Where my brother and sisters and I pretended it was Winter in late Spring.

Staging snowball fights with round white blooms.

Spring flowers lightened the gloom

With myriad blossoming colors under the shady blankets.

My world existed in a few square blocks

of rural mountain town where the school building stood

Brick solid two blocks north

where I learned to read

Opening world of unsuspected wonders.

The white church we attended almost ever Sunday

sat quietly half a block away

Where HELL was scared into me

and Heaven was driven out

Near the empty lot full of foxtails

Spearing through saggy socks

Stabbing ankles above worn sneakers

Whose gaping holed toes let dirt, rocks and weeds

To turn our bath water into roiling brown floods

Filled with the broken debris from frenzied baseball games

Played with discarded sticks that filled our hands with slivers

And white paint peeled and flaked from the foam ball

With missing chunks a neighborhood dog tore out

Before we found it.

That was my world

Except when a mother took us downtown

To stores filled with toys, cloths, candy

Tools and magnificent, unimaginable things.

My dad was gone from home allot

Creating house, barns, shops with his mind and hands.

Building homes for other families that we couldn't afford

While my knees stared out of ragged pant legs.

Growing up in the 1950's