Gingerville

Two things today . . . my sister's birthday and the news of the death of a girlfriend's mother . . . have taken my thoughts back to my childhood neighborhood.  As if my hometown weren't small enough, sections of it had their own designation.  My neighborhood, less than a dozen blocks, was known as "Gingerville."  Our own mythology informed us that Gingerville was once its own little town, but we might have made that up.  My friend Tom, who lived around the corner from me, tells a story about a man who had a horse named Ginger and that the name came from his horse.  Or maybe it came from the gingerbread on the old Victorian houses scattered around.  I suppose it doesn't really matter where the name came from; those of us who grew up there have a special place in our hearts for Gingerville. 

We were post-WWII kids, the first of the Baby Boomers.  And there were so many of us!  In my mind, I can go through the entire neighborhood and tell you, house by house, what kids lived there.  We played together all the time, holding circuses in our driveways, riding our two-wheelers in the evening as part of the Gingerville Bikeriders Club, playing Cucarachi (a made-up game that involved bikes and tag and flashlights and who-knows what else) as it got dark, playing baseball in our backyards and empty lots, and just generally being happy kids during a happy time in America.  Or so we thought.  We knew very little about the Korean War or McCarthyism or the Bay of Pigs.  I suspect most of us do remember the Cuban Missile Crisis, as it sparked an exciting new interest:  fallout shelters.  Those of us who had basements (known as "cellars") got a thrill from stocking them with canned soup and board games.  We failed to see the gravity inherent in a need for fallout shelters.  To us, they were akin to the forts we built on wooded lots or under porches.

I lived at 8 Maple Avenue.  Ford and Jane lived at 22 Maple Avenue, across the street from my cousins.  It was their mother who died yesterday, one of the last of the neighborhood moms from the Gingerville of my childhood.  Dottie was that happy mom, the one who never seemed to get flustered, who had a wry sense of humor, and who gave out the best candy on Halloween.  My memories of her are pure and visceral.  Dottie went out on her own terms.  At 89, she decided she'd had enough of dialysis and picked the date that she would stop.  And two weeks later, she was released.

I know of at least four Gingerville moms who are still alive, but I think all the dads are gone, by death or by Alzheimers.  A few of us kids are gone, too.  Although I live only a couple of miles away, I have not revisited the neighborhood.  No one I know lives there anymore.  But Gingerville still exists in memory, where it belongs.  Because it wasn't just a neighborhood; it was a moment in time.  It was the place where childhood dominated and the pain of the world was unknown to us.  And I will always be in love with that.