Sagamore Lane

When my mom, my sister Kim, and I, moved with my grandparents and uncle Bobby, to Sagamore Lane in 1965, this home had just been built. There were still woods to play in nearby, and new builds to explore when the workmen weren't on site. On the left end of the house was the open kitchen which had full exposure to the family room. I dropped a full glass of milk in that kitchen one day, and threw up, then was rushed into my bedroom when they discovered I was covered with big red measles. There was a utility/laundry room and entrance to the carport from the kitchen. The family room had patio doors opening to the back yard, where my mom and uncle would stretch out for Coppertone scented sun-worshipping sessions on the lawn, and where my sister and I played in the sprinkler. There was a living room to the front of these rooms that had large windows; we rarely played in there but it was nice to lie on the sofa and look outside to see what was happening on our street. My grandmother always liked a formal living room, so all tv viewing happened in the family room. The main entrance was at the end of these two rooms, in the center of the house, and to the right of it was the hallway leading to the bedrooms. My mom and her teenage brother would not have to share a room, sleeping on the beautiful old twin beds, which were mistakenly thrown away when I moved to Florida 1 and a half years ago. I'm sure that's why we moved there from East North Street, for the bedrooms. I was impressed with my grandparents' master bedroom bath. It was the most ornate bathroom I'd ever seen, with two sinks, and a little brass stool with a velvet cushion where my grandmother could get ready for work in front of the wall to wall mirrors.

Current photo from the web, the tree really grew in the more than 50 years since we lived there, and the ramp was not there, then.

My sister and I shared a bedroom and a double bed. We had one of the big windows, too, with a view of a small tree and the street. There was a dresser with a big mirror and a closet that we played in underneath the hanging clothes, and our bookcase filled with Little Golden Books and Doctor Seuss. At one point we smuggled or believed we were smuggling, a guinea pig we'd already named Ruby, after our beloved neighbor from East North Street. My other grandmother, Inez, always had guinea pigs at her house a couple of hours north of us, in Rock Hill. We brought one home one day, giving each other devious looks with our bag of dirty clothes, Ruby tucked inside, sitting between us in the backseat. Ruby was reluctantly installed in the utility room in a little cage, with the paint cans and laundry detergent and windows that let in light, but we had Ruby out quite a lot. We weren't supposed to let her on the furniture, but of course, we did. We were blessedly unsupervised children, and one of our favorite things was to put Ruby on our bed, put on a Beatles record, and then jump on the bed, providing Ruby with thrills. We watched out for her, careful not to let her get hurt, hoping to see the joy cross her face.

My uncle had girlfriends come over while he might be having a sunbath, and my sister and I tried to spend as much time as we could with these arbiters of taste and style. Long hair and bangs and paisley dresses, shoes with buckles, penny loafers. We'd get shooed away eventually, but sometimes, if my uncle was babysitting us, we'd get to drive with them to The Clock, a hamburger joint where the teenagers hung out. Kim and I had to stay in the backseat, but we could still view the scene. Lots of learning how to be teenaged, and a handy bribe in case we needed it - not telling that our uncle was smoking. We watched Shindig and acted out the performances of our favorite singers to entertain each other, out on the driveway, dressed in leotards and our mother's forbidden hairpiece, a long brown fall. She somehow knew every time we had had it out playing in it... I think we became a little notorious, the two of us, as we danced in the driveway, roamed the neighborhood and climbed around in the new builds. There was a girl across the street that I wanted to play with, but, looking back, I think her mother wouldn't let her. Once, I was allowed into their house, into a type of workroom that had autumn leaves and streamers taped up on the walls. Maybe the mom was a teacher, I could tell she disapproved of me, and that was the first and last time I went over there. Another family who were Catholic was very friendly to us, and I played with all their kids. Once Kim ate a bottle of baby aspirin at their house and the mother called my grandmother and we took her to have her stomach pumped. I guess we were handfuls. They got the first color tv on the block, and I watched it with them a few times, but it didn't impress me all that much. There was a girl up the street, a little older, named Penny Nichols whose older brother was paralyzed in a football accident. Her house had french pane windows, and I would walk by and look at them and feel how sad everyone inside must be. They still make me a little sad.

There was a young couple on the other end of the street that I liked and they had a baby. I liked to go over and hold it. They would play Rubber Soul, my favorite album, and I would play with the baby. I still think of their house when I listen to Rubber Soul. They had thick rustic wood paneling (Norwegian, I suspected) in their family room and modern furniture. The house seemed to always smell like bacon cooking.
Kim and I got bikes that Christmas which became our horses as we flew around the subdivision with a few other kids. During this time, I jumped out of a window of a new build, having been spooked by the owners who pulled up to check on its progress. Luckily, the buyers were a nice couple and the husband was a doctor who drove me and my bike home and also checked my ankle, which was sprained. We lost our bikes for a week or two after this incident. Those were good days, even when we got in trouble because we were relatively free children exploring the world and having fun. The ideal.

Norwegian Wood

Kim and I played a game we called Mean Lady. One kid, the mean lady, would guard the porch upon which was a big heavy urn of my grandmother's. Inside it were dozens of poisonous snakes. The kids out in the yard would try to steal up onto the porch but mean lady at any moment might touch the urn, and point at a kid, which meant you were in the path of a serpent, and you'd have to stand still until mean lady moved again. 

One very boring day, I got into the paint cans in the utility room and proceeded to paint some porcelain horses of my grandmother's a new color. I don't think Kim did this with me, she probably had more sense. But I recall seeing my mom's car in the street and running out of the house and up the road yelling "She's gonna kill me, she's gonna kill me!" for quite a long stretch. I had to live with dour mean looks for a while, but I did survive. They weren't prized possessions of hers, unlike the poor people. Two figurines; an elderly Asian man and woman in simple clothes, with rice cakes in their hands and rice paddy hats hanging down their backs. I contemplated these people, imagining their lives. I had the Story About Ping and concocted a story about this couple and the little yellow duck. When it rained and we couldn't go outside and we'd read books or watched tv and had nothing to do, we could always think about the figurines, or imagine what was happening in the toile wallpaper.

In 1965 I had 2nd grade at Sara Collins Elementary School, a new school for me. My teacher was young, a Miss Ramseur, and I was not very happy about being in her classroom. My last teacher had been so nice, Mrs. Poor, she liked me, and had even bought a car from my grandfather. Back then, teachers could slap your hands if you were bad, and I wasn't bad in class. One day Miss Ramseur slapped my hands with a ruler because I was talking -  I'd asked for my eraser back from a boy who'd borrowed it. Maybe it was during a test, but this unfairness had me running into the bathroom and refusing to come out. My mom took me out of Sara Collins and back to East North Street Elementary. I am not sure if this is the reason why, but for 3rd grade, we moved to another house closer to East North Street School. I was sad to leave this house. Ruby was buried in the yard, having been found permanently asleep one morning when I went to feed her. I'd miss my baby friend and its parents and the fun we had with the neighborhood kids. I said a little prayer to the tree out front, asking to please stay, but the tree knew better, and soon, we'd move to Lockwood Avenue. So ended the saga of Sagamore Lane.

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