Comments on: My Neighborhood

By: silverlin

silverlin — Sat, 28 Mar 2009 03:15:47 +0000

I lived about ten blocks from Lakeview School and only went there once, to watch a basketball game between Lakeview and Minnequa where I did go. As I walked to Lakeview, I had the distinct sensation of leaving my neighborhood.

I lived on the corner of Cypress and Division from the time I was not yet seven till I graduated fom Central. Both those streets were unpaved when we moved there. There were so many kids living on the north half of the 1500 block and the first house on the 1400 block of Cypress that we rarely needed kids from the south half to make up two teams, football or baseball, to play in the street.

We played touch football, of course. Some Saturdays we’d go to Bessemer Park to play tackle. To the end there was an empty lot on the corner of Stone and Division that would have been fine for tackle, but there was a small, younger girl, named Rosie I think, that nobody wanted to play with because she hit so hard. We played in that lot just once that I can remember.

By: jerry miller

jerry miller — Fri, 27 Mar 2009 16:30:50 +0000

We didn’t have any prostitutes on our block. We had lots of kids, fathers who worked and mothers who stayed home, except for one who was divorced. I can’t think of one man on our block who worked in an office. Several worked on the railroad, or at the state hospital, or POD. Strangely, none worked at CF & I that I can remember. We played basketball in the alley behind my house. My dad had put up a hoop on a homemade backboard, nailed to a telephone pole. The ball bounced into a yard of a couple with no kids sometimes, which they didn’t like. One day we went out to play and the hoop and backboard had been moved to a different telephone pole… but put up upside down. I can still remember almost every family that lived on our block.

By: Joann Mahaney O'Neill

Joann Mahaney O'Neill — Wed, 25 Mar 2009 01:59:24 +0000

I lived fairly close to your neighborhood and yet it was really different from what you discribe. That will be a story for another time–Palmer and Mesa.

The man who was into racing also was also a square dance caller and he called for a small group of kids that met in my parents’ basement. His son, later was also into racing and owned a shop that did radiators or something like that at the junction. He had a daughter that was a part of the racing circuit. She raced at the I-76 track (Fort Morgan) several times about 10 years ago. I did not know about it until long after the fact, but I am not into racing anyway, so I am relaying this information. Bill O’Neill lived in the 1100 block of Belmont. He vividly remembers Don, the racer, and Russell.

Thanks for some interesting thoughts.