Picture, if you will, house
after house after house of the
post-war American dream, not
Levittown, but close enough, and not
geographically, because this was Houston,
which was as far from New
York as this
neighborhood is from anyone’s
neighborhood is from anyone’s
notion of today’s American dream.
See them, these near identical
houses
filled with near-identical
families?
Watch the Chevvies and Fords carry
dads
out of their driveways at 7:42AM
each day
while moms prod their two-point-five kids
to “hurry, or you’ll miss the bus”
before they sit
and plan their near-identical days
of cooking,
cleaning, and coffee with Carol
next door.
We didn't know it then, of course,
but we were
to become famous, we 2.5 kids in
those houses.
We were the post-war population
explosion,
the near-identical babies whose arrival would be
felt from Madison Heights to
Madison Avenue.
Back then, we knew only the joy of
slipping
through the dusk, hiding and seeking with our pals,
just waiting to claim our piece of the dream with a
just waiting to claim our piece of the dream with a
Boom!
***
Written for Imaginary Garden with Real Toads, where the prompt was "neighborhood."
boom...smiles....so whats up with the half kid? smiles....man i remember playing most evenings and we just made up games...those were the days...
ReplyDeleteAh yes, the baby boomers definitely did leave their mark / are still leaving it! And I do remember those neighborhoods of similar houses too..'ranch houses' in a row....at one time the "American Dream." I enjoyed your write; and thanks for taking part in the RT Challenge!
ReplyDeleteThis reads so true. I so remember! What a fantastic neighborhood poem!
ReplyDeleteOh, those frame houses ( but so solid and well built compared to some today) - each with a tree planted by the developer. (Is that brick on the wall under the porch? Each house had a slightly different color of brink or size/style/pattern of brick in our neighborhood.)
ReplyDeleteNice post!
Great write!
ReplyDeleteBOOM!! comes in various disguises .. I thought of 'Houston we have a problem' as I read about your childhood home.
Like so many American places of that time. And yet each person really did have an individual story i think. Good photo illustration too!
ReplyDeleteI used to envy the people in those houses, because my father was such an individualist, but it wasn't too long before I was glad he bought 6 acres going straight up the back side of a mountain and taught us how to build a house. There was nothing cookie-cutter about our place, and it was fun.
ReplyDeleteI'm a boomer, too, but I think this is the first time I've seen a poem end with "Boom!" and I love it.
A good write.
K
I really like this a lot. It was a significant time in society and seemed to give a concrete realisation to a dream of how the world should be. Yet so many of the participants in this life were unaware of its significance - they were just kids, playing and having fun.
ReplyDeleteYou just described my neighborhood...except it was Kick the Can, not Hide and Seek.
ReplyDeleteYou do realize, of course, that you and I are PRE-Boomers - we are the rumbles of thunder in the distance, portents of the storm soon to come. We lead the way - we were a warning that no one paid any attention to until the Country woke up to too few schools and more kids than you could shake a stick at.
ReplyDeleteYeah. Those were the days.