My hometown

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I mentioned in a previous post that I missed my childhood home, but I also really miss my childhood hometown. I don't miss what it is today; I miss what it was back then. I grew up in a small rural town with a population of about 250 people. I was related to half of the town, and we knew pretty much everyone in town. We played with the neighborhood kids; there weren't many, and you may not have liked them all, but you found yourself playing with them out of necessity rather than actually liking them. My brother and I ran around the town on our bikes. We had so much freedom there because we knew not to get in trouble, or my parents would know before we even got home. The local hangout spot was the town park, which was tiny, but it was one of the very few places the town had. My cousins lived across the street from the park, so my mom knew if anything happened, we could go over there. We lived next door to my grandmother until she died, and then my aunt, uncle, and mom took turns watching my disabled uncle, so someone was always over at that house. My aunt also owned a home on the other side of town (not that there was a lot of town), I had a cousin at the end of our street, another cousin across the tracks from the cousin on our street, another cousin on the same side of the tracks but you had to cross the tracks to get to it or go through the fertilizer plant to get to it. We knew everyone in that town. My brother and I made friends with the local kids and would play games at the park, or we would go to our friends' houses, or they'd come to ours. We got in scuffles with kids and had parents talk to our parents, something that, if anyone knew my dad, never would have happened, because while my dad knew we weren't perfect, he also knew we didn't just start fights. My dad once had one of the parents show up at our house to say how my brother hurt their son, who is my age, and my brother is three years older. They were playing by the railroad tracks because that was the only elevated spot in town; everything else was flat. They were playing King of the Hill, and the whole purpose of that game is to be the last one standing, and it gets physical; anyone playing that game knows it's not for the weak. This kid was known to be a whiner, and he drove my dad crazy ( I have known him and his twin sister since we were three and were in preschool together, and my dad volunteered at the preschool and rode the bus; he knew them well). My brother had apparently shoved him, and he fell down the hill and got hurt, and he went home crying. The kid's adult (his mom had some weird situation with two guys that I, to this day, don't understand) came and screamed at my dad; my dad told him if his kid can't handle a game, then he needs to stay on his own side of the tracks and stay away from us, and that's apparently just what happened because they weren't allowed on our side of town again after that for years. I still played with them at the park, because again, you had friends out of necessity in a small town. My brother always told me I turned that kid gay, because when we were little, he had a crush on me. He once pinned me to the ground and kissed me, and I was trying to get free, so I grabbed a nearby stick and hit him where the sun doesn't shine. My brother says that's what made him gay, but the signs that he was gay were there from childhood, long before I hit him with a stick. It's weird when I think about my friendship with him and his twin sister, because I wasn't great friends with them, but I played with them all the time. They were just different. I had friends in town who never went to the park, but I'd go to their house, or they'd go to mine, but when I couldn't go to their houses, I'd go to the park and find kids to play with. There wasn't a whole lot in town. We had a post office, a carryout for part of my childhood(it closed for a bit, then reopened, and then closed permanently), there was a church that I used to go to for Bible school, and here was the local elementary school that was just across the bridge halfway between my town and the next one. The school was by a creek that my brother and I loved to play in. It was a ways down, and we used to climb down after school sometimes and collect the stray balls that fell down there during recess at the school, because once a ball fell down there, no one was allowed to get it for safety reasons, so my brother and I had quite the collection of kickballs, basketballs, etc. The school was technically on our side of the train tracks, but you either had to go through the fertilizer plant or around the tracks to get to school. We walked to school every day unless it was bad out; then my dad would take us and pick us up. We walked ourselves to school, but walked with friends home. We used to walk in a big group but we would get smaller as we kept coming to houses. I was the only kid on my side of the track, so I broke off from the group a little earlier. I remember there was like some unsaid competition in the morning about who got to school earlier between the kid my brother shoved and me. We used to race in the morning to be the first one outside the doors to be let in. We would see each other at the post office in the morning because we'd stop to get the mail for our parents (we had post office boxes), and we would look at each other and then race out of the post office. The post office lady actually used to take our school pictures on the front of the post office on the first day of school and give them to our parents. She also lived across from the park in a big house. Her children attended a private catholic school in the next town over. She seemed to like my brother and me because we were well-behaved kids for the most part. She once even took us to see Santa at the fire station with her kids. I remember being sad to hear she died a few years ago. That town represented the innocence of childhood; friendships were formed, and while you may have had enemies, you still played with them, because who else were you going to play with? During winter, once we actually had snow on the ground, all of the kids ran to the railroad track to go sledding, because, as I said, it was the only elevated part of town. We lived next to two other small towns that were a little larger than ours and had a little more to do, so we would often ride our bikes to them, especially the one that had the library, because that's where we went to get books. My brother and I would ride our bikes to the library all the time, but it was about a three-mile ride. There is a cemetery between our town and the other small town where half of my family is buried that I still go and visit sometimes. It was the very place I remember meeting my friend at when we got our parents to agree to a sleepover at our house. I remember we were in the middle of the snowstorm, so we were expecting no school the next day so we begged our parents and they relented and said if there was school the next day we wouldn't have to go because I almost never missed school. The deal was that my brother and I had to walk to meet her, so there we were walking through a snowstorm at night to meet my friend who was walking by herself on a country road in the middle of nowhere to meet by the cemetery. I don't know how we didn't get kidnapped, but here we are. My brother had his friend from next door come over (his friend was a year older than me, but he didn't go to our elementary school because he was open-enrolled in a school in town), and we all played a game that consisted of us knocking each other down in the snow. I just remember walking inside after the game, and my legs were frozen, but my dad had made hot chocolate for us and baked cookies. It is one of my favorite memories. During the summer, my brother and I had another game that consisted of picking up the leftover grass from mowing and shoving it down the backs of each other's shirts; we almost always came inside all itchy and in need of a shower. That town was the perfect place to grow up, but over the years it changed and not for the better. I went back not too long ago because I still have family out that way and went out to visit the cemetery. The church hasn't been in operation in years; it's now someone's house or apartments, I don't even know which. The elementary school closed about 13 years ago and is now a cat sanctuary, of all things. Before that, it sat empty, and I was able to walk on the property and check it out, but now there are cameras everywhere, and you aren't allowed to set foot on the property. The post office closed several years ago and is now, ironically, the home of one of my childhood friend's parents; the carryout hasn't been open in years, and now the building is completely gone. A lot of the houses there are in complete disrepair, or they're gone. My childhood home is gone but the trees my brother and I planted as kids are still there, and they're huge. It makes me smile when I see them. The trailer park is pretty much completely gone. My cousin owns the land, but there is maybe one trailer left on it. I had friends in a couple of those trailers. I was happy to see my friend's parents still own the garage there, the same ones that live in the former post office, and was one of the friends I had at the trailer park. The park is still there, but I never see kids playing there when I visit, which is sad because when I was a kid there were always kids playing there. I miss my town, but I miss what it was when I was growing up, not what it is now. The photo is of my brother and me in front of the tree in our yard (the tree eventually came down during a storm and fell into the road), but it shows some of the town in the background and how close our yard was to the train tracks (we could feel our house shake when one came through). I forgot we used to have a mailbox; it was for the newspaper we briefly got before my parents decided it wasn't worth the extra cost.