Writing Challlenge 003 - On The Street Where I live - April 2009

ON THE STREET WHERE I LIVED

The day started in the usual normal way. We went to town to buy me a new bathing suit. It was so hot that July day in 1955 the tar on the street in front of our house bubbled. Swimming up at the East Side public pool was my favorite pastime.

Happy, contented and quite smug, I sat sipping my Shirley Temple like drink while he drank his Bloody Mary in the only bar open in town that morning, The Oasis. Dark brown hair, deep set dark eyes, tall, lanky and very handsome, I was so proud sitting next to him, my father. As he told me I could go home and go swimming but be sure to stop at the house and tell my mother but be home by supper. I skipped my way up the steep hill home and was ecstatically happy. I anticipated the ice cold water from the reservoir that filled the pool being most refreshing and delightful that sweltering day.

Someone was calling my name. Over the splashing sounds of the water mingled with all the chatter and squealing of kids rough housing, dunking each other, I heard it again and again. I spotted Ritchie as I came out of the pool and looked down the road towards the parking area. A teenage neighborhood boy, I secretly had a puppy crush on was waving frantically trying to get me to hurry and "come on."

When I reached Richie and his hot rod of a car, the first kid on our block to get one, his usual happy go lucky way and smiling face was quite stoic and stern. He said I had go home immediately, but it was only 3 o'clock and I argued, pleaded and begged but to no avail. My mother's orders were to take me home now.

As we rode down our street, I sensed something was terribly wrong and Ritchie was unnaturally quiet. There were cops cars, flashing lights, an ambulance and neighbors all outside up and down the street and in front on my house.

"What's going on?" I asked.

"Your mother is at our house" (which was at the end of the street, about 5 houses away) "You are to go there," he answered.

As I entered his house, I could feel the somber doom. My mother sat slumped over in an old, overstuffed winged backed chair in the corner of their living room. Her hands covering her face, her head nodding back and forth and saying

"No, no, no." She looked broken. Frightened, confused I approached her slowly, aware that eyes of others in the room were watching me, I put my arm around her shoulder and asked

"What's wrong Mom?"

"Your father shot and killed himself. He's dead."

Running from her, running from the room of others, out the door across the street to the hill and only stopped when I was breathless and found a hidden spot under the iron steps which sloped the steep hill and sat in the damp earth. No one could see me but I peered out and could see the house in the distance and yet seeing nothing at all.

Sharon Ehlinger Porcari
POW! - Pottsville Open Writers 

 

In the Block Where I Live

I come out of my flat and I live on the 14th Floor. I have to catch the lift. Sometimes I get frightened. Men come in the lift, smelling of drink and sometimes they are verbally abusive.

But you do meet people who are very nice. You speak to them one minute and then you don't see them again for a long time.

I get out of the block and look out onto the pavement. There is a bus stop where all the elderly wait, chatting away and very friendly.

As you look across the road, on to the banking, there are daffodils. And there are another three blocks across the road and every block has a banking with all daffodils.

Maria Gethin
GROW

On the Street Where I live

There is a supermarket at the bottom there
Over the road there is a bus stop where
I catch the bus up the hill
To where, it seems, time stood still
My grandparents lived in this road when I was small
Now it doesn't seem so long ago at all
There is a green with a triangle with heather and bluebells in Spring
Trees, shrubs, where butterflies sit, humming bees hum and birds sing.
Three Victorian cottages, this is where I live today
More Victorian cottages are opposite
When I was a little girl, we used to come this way.
Further up the hill we passed the road too
Where my great-grandparents lived, when they were new.
Past houses we go of different designs
Some new, but some built in olden times
At the top is Fairlight Glen, that starts at the bluebell dell
With beech trees' leaves of green which go back to times immemorial
Beautiful gardens at the front and in between
Enhance the houses in my street as they're seen
I love the street where I live and I would say again and again
The street where I live is my domain.

Mary Cook
GROW

Directions to the house

On the 'street' where I live, we don't have
such a thing, ...you would need a thesaurus
to find us... " turn right by the ginnel,
skip the snicket on your left, come fifty
yards and through the bow-way, ignoring
the ashplace where we keep the bikes,
and by our back door.. ( or is it the front
for a back to back?)..you'll see 'Utistugu',
that' s summer pasture in Norse.. ring the bell,
(there's a sign that says so), not all the time,
it does that when the button jams, and not
at all when it freezes....someone should
open the door.

Bruce Barnes

 

On The Street Where I Live
Borrowed from the Movie: A blast from the past

'On the street where you live
I have often walked down this street before
but the pavement always stayed beneath my feet before
All at once am I several stories high
knowing I'm on the street where you live'

Plot A young man who is overjoyed just to be standing in front of the house of the person that he loves

My Street

In a council estate
where heaven waits
and nature survives
with troubled neighbours

A peace descends and
silence quietly blends
for a moment till
crows scream out and cars zoom by

And dust and smoke
while all things choke
and the doctors words
relax and sooth my troubled mind

And on the street
watching Mums chat and
kids play with music buzzing
and birds humming

life goes on forever forward
while the silence and the quiet
are precious moments to be savored
a freedom from stress

and a lifetime of duress
and some confusion
leads to this conclusion

Happy joyous and free
is the way we want to be
so celebrate in life
Today on this street

Paul Evans
Stevenage Survivors 

 

On the Street Where I live

On the street where I live I see parents taking their children to the school. We also have a special needs school behind my flat. They play happily there and the excitement of them makes you feel alive.

The road outside is the main route into Bexhill. We have many lorries, buses and cars going through. I find it does not disturb me, it is really quite pleasant to see.

Ambulances and police cars zoom through, being as it is a main route.

Neighbours are quite elderly and we do not see much of each other, apart from one couple who can have a n ambulance and a few police cars every day to them.

We have a park across the road and see dog walkers in there at all times of the day and evening.

Jan Humphreys
GROW