Sunday, December 9, 2012

You Know You're From West Middlesex if-------------------

We have discovered a new Facebook game. Someone set up this proposition and slowly we have been answering questions. I posted pictures from the sixties that my dad took on his new Kodak instamatic camera. Many comments are made on them. The memories are fun.
What I found interesting is how even a few years can change some of the memories. Or maybe some lived closer to down town and could remember the old stores that were torn down in the sixties or early seventies. But I do remember vaguely the old ice skating rink on the corner of Erie and Garfield Streets. A sunny winter afternoon walking over the block with one of my older siblings. I often wished they hadn't gotten rid of it.
As I observe the old pictures and read everyone's memories, I feel truly blessed that with had such a great childhood. I guess that is why I write about so many of our memories. As each one is recorded as a comment, I want to say, I wrote about that and put my link. Is that spamming? I did plug my blog, though. These people may really want to read about small town W. Middlesex.
I do think though of some of the darkness that some kids lived in while growing up. One told me of what we know now is child abuse. Some girls, I thought for sure at the time it was made up, told the story of a man driving around with no pants and exposing himself to them. As I have grown up, I know this could be perfectly true. It is a nasty world and bad things happen. People harm others, even their children. There was even the rumor of hobos living in the tunnels under I-80 and we were forbidden to play at the Kiwanis, then Alf Landon Park on the edge of town. Our parents knew of the danger, but we, in innocence, really had no idea.
I felt I really had no idea of the dangers in the world or at least in West Middlesex. We played in innocence and my parents didn't spell out the problems. In a way, I learned to believe in the good in people. Did we lose that and did we need to lose that belief?

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