Virginia Avenue II

On a cool afternoon in March my brother and I stood on the crest of the hill above Virginia Avenue looking down on the little house of our childhood.  The gray wooden siding was faded. Crumbling and rotten wood clung to the edge of the carport. Otherwise, it had not changed. We had walked up the hill from Vale Street, through a lot where new town homes were being constructed, and stood in the Duncan family graveyard about 30 feet from our old backdoor.  The two intact gravestones were still there, along with a collection of other fragments. The internments pre-dated the Civil War.  As a child, I used the old gravestones to mark my place in a longer view of time.

The leaves were off the trees, so we had a good view of the whole neighborhood on the southeast side of Marion.  I pointed out to Joey the north side of the wooded hill where we had built the lean-to shelter that he had burned down. On the south side we had constructed the oil can shed the wind had blown down. We traded other memories of childhood exploits. I was the oldest and most nostalgic. For me, childhood had been about freedom. I walked home from elementary, junior high and high school.  As long as I checked in with Mom, the whole south end of town was my playground.

In the summers, my bicycle gave me access to larger terrain. I pedaled to Grandmother’s house on the mill hill in Clinchfield, mowed the grass, ate dinner and watched Gun Smoke with her. I cruised down Airport Road beyond the north end of town to where my friends lived on the hills above the Catawba River. I labored up and down the twisting 15 miles of country roads to my Grandfather’s house in Montford Cove.

Summer days and nights were mostly unsupervised.  I met friends at the soda fountain in the Dime Store.  We bought peashooters and went to the matinee at the House Theater where we sat through double features and sent peas streaking like shooting stars through the movie light - until we got old enough to realize girls wanted to hold hands. We camped in the woods behind the house or on the summit of Mt. Ida.  We roamed the town after midnight, walked naked along the railroad tracks, broke windows in abandoned buildings, and raced laundry carts around the Laundromat. We smoked cigarettes, told dirty jokes, had peeing and spitting contests and made liberal use of our expanded vocabularies.  We raced bicycles, homemade cogwheel carts, and skateboards.  We built things and destroyed them.  We climbed the rock faces of the old quarry at the base of Mt. Ida.  And survived it all – mostly.  Somehow, we grew up, became more constructive and less destructive, developed better tastes and decision-making skills, learned social tact and moderated our language.  We got jobs, got married and had our own kids.

Our children lived a different childhood – less freedom and more structure.  We feared for our children in a changing world. We believed the world was more dangerous.  Roaming unsupervised exposed children to all the things we could not control.

As I stood on that hill overlooking my childhood I realized the insignificance of the changes to the physical world but the vastness of the changes to the social world.  I felt sad.  But should I?  Was I just being an old man unwilling to consider the possibility that change is good? I don’t think so.  Here is what I have seen of childhood during the past 30 years.

Only kids in the ghetto and the country roam anywhere.  Kids in the suburbs are held captive in afterschool programs.  They either attend soccer practice, karate or music lessons, or they go home and plug into the television or computer. If they get exercise, it’s dancing with the Wii machine.  They are afraid of the dark, of spiders, snakes and other kids.  They are overweight and over-controlled. They might be gifted at school but when they become teen-agers they will be unpracticed at decision-making.  It will take them years to learn by trial and error what I had discovered by thirteen.  Their experiences with woods, streams, hills and streets are zilch.  For the young, all bird songs sound the same.  Stars are just dots of lights in the night sky.  I know am generalizing, that all childhoods are not like this, but there is common pattern to growing up that leads many of my college students to the bewilderment they face today.

A little girl has a 50/50 chance of having a baby before she get married.  If she’s lucky enough to avoid premature motherhood, she might finish college but need another six years to find a career.  And she won’t worry about it much.  She has to find something worthy and she can live at home and continue to eat mom’s cooking.  Her boyfriends will wonder aimlessly through a similar pattern.  They will enjoy college for six to eight years or until they max-out their eligibility to play sports.  If they get a college degree it will probably be in communication studies, psychology or sports and exercise studies, which prepares them for nothing other than the need for another degree.

I know. I am just a curmudgeon who excels in hyperbole.  Maybe I’m the stereotypical guy who thinks he has to be bad before he can be good. The current generation of youth is kinder, more respectful of their parents and more tolerant of people with differences.  But let’s see how they turn out.  They are more patient, but I fear, more clueless. Will they see the future with the sense of urgency that seems necessary?  Has their lack of freedom caused them to miss things that others see and hear?  Will they be imaginative and passionate enough to solve the problems we are leaving them?