When we moved to the alley, it was August, so we didn’t know about the 4th of July there. It’s just as well, because the next year was the Bicentennial, the very most special 4th of July since 1776. Our country turned 200 years old on our second year in the alley. We had spent all school year preparing for it.

At Oakwood Elementary School, we had special interest groups that taught us old fashioned crafts. Mommy taught the sewing classes, which I was not allowed to take, or I didn’t want to, but all the tough mean girls in my class took them, and they loved Mommy! I took the cooking class taught by Mrs. Schauman, my Brownie leader.
There was such excitement in the air about the Bicentennial. In the alley, Mrs. Daneen taught the other grown-ups how to make a piñata. It was a big papier mache ’76, covered with red white and blue crepe paper. Mrs. Daneen was from Ecuador, and she explained that they celebrated with piñatas in her country. The giant ’76 was filled with candy and hung from the Miller’s tree swing branch.

Earl swung the piñata up and down while the rest of us took turns wearing a blindfold, being spun around, and swinging at the piñata with a bat. That may not have been my first piñata, but it was certainly the first one I saw being made. It was thrilling to celebrate the Bicentennial. I knew that the next time the country had a centennial, it would be the tricentennial, and I’d be 109 if I was still alive.

I was 9 years old at the bicentennial, and it was an exciting time to be alive. I had on a red white and blue striped polyester tank top. Everyone else was dressed pretty much the same. We started our celebration with a parade. We walked through the alley ringing different sized bells from Mrs. Miller’s bell collection. All the grownups happily joined in our glee.

Then we occupied ourselves by lighting snakes and smoke bombs. Snakes were little black pellets that gave off a thick, acrid black smoke. When you lit them, an ash would slowly curl out of the pellet, like a snake. There were fancy snakes that gave off colored smoke, too, but they didn’t curl as cool as those plain black ones. Smoke bombs were colorful balls that gave off a lot of smoke, usually white, but sometimes colored smoke.

Some time in the afternoon we had an alleywide potluck, which culminated in the piñata.
There was space dust in the piñata! That was so much fun to eat. It was like dry pop—it would explode in your mouth. It didn’t taste good—it was just fun! Mrs. Miller made a red cake for the potluck. It was too pretty to eat. Daddy horrified me by smoking with Mr. and Mrs. Averet, and generally getting very loud while they played cards.

The grownups really enjoyed the potluck, and sitting in the vacant lot talking while the kids played games until dark. That’s when we had our own fireworks show. The teenagers lit fountains, and pinned spinners to the tree. It was thrilling to see the show so close up, and the danger made it all the more exciting. Somewhere around 11 we packed it up and went home. It was the beginning of a tradition.

The next year: “I like coffee, I like tea, I like Char to jump in with me! Uh-Oh!” Suddenly, I found myself jiggling harder than usual—my bra broke! I was too embarrassed to mention it out loud—I just raced home to change. And that was one of my favorite bras, too! This fourth got off to that rocky start, but it had a similar finish as the year before. Just, since it wasn’t a special year, it seemed kind of—weird to get all worked up over it. I know, we still had fireworks and the piñata. We still had the potluck, but it wasn’t a bicentennial; that was once in a lifetime.

All the Alley mothers had a ‘thing.’ Mrs. Urban took us on field trips. She took us down to South (Junior High) to fly kites, to the fish hatchery, to the water slide. Mrs. Miller had another thing, and so did Mrs. Averet. Mommy’s thing was candy houses. Every Christmas season, Mommy would throw a baking party for the alleykids. We made candy houses out of graham crackers, decorated with candy, stuck on with frosting. One year we made bread in a bag. Mommy put all the ingredients for bread in a sealable plastic bag, and we squeezed the bag for kneading. Somehow I remember that not turning out too well; I think my bread rose right over the top of the bag. Also, I ate enough dough to be burping up something that smelled like beer all day, plus we turned it into sweet rolls with raisins and brown sugar and cinnamon. I never liked sweet rolls growing up; they were way too sweet, and the raisins always tasted burnt. Mommy remembers this experiment working out really well.

We would also make Christmas ornaments with our neighbors. Nell tried to eat our gingerbread ornaments that came from Denmark. Mommy was angry about this, but also showed Nell how to make and decorate bread dough ornaments. It wasn’t actually bread dough; it was homemade play dough, which was cut into shapes with cookie cutters and then baked hard in the oven. We painted them with poster paint.

I also remember making shrinky dinks with the alley kids, and this cool craft from Denmark. Shrinky dinks were a kit you bought at the craft store. It was a large sheet of plastic that you could trace designs upon from the book. You’d carefully color the whole thing with markers or something, and then bake them. They would shrink to a fraction of their original size, and you’d have a bracelet or a keychain, or whatever little thing you wanted to make. It never quite worked out the way it was supposed to, though. Everything was warped, and usually ended up in the trash. I kept thinking that I would get it right if I kept trying; the shrinky dinks were more hype than fun craft.

That thing from Denmark was more fun. It was a plastic bead craft. There were these little plastic boards, like a geoboard, that came in various shapes. They were covered with very small pegs. We covered each peg with a thin, small bead. The beads came in many different colors. Most of the boards were some geometrical shape, but you could find a butterfly or something else, too. After you’d cover ever peg with a bead, you would put the iron on top of your design for a few seconds, just long enough to melt the beads, not the board. That, of course, would ruin the board so you couldn’t use it again. We made these for hours on end in Denmark, and made them when we got home, too.

I think we must have made them at one of the Christmas craft parties. We spent a lot of time this time of the year making our own ornaments, too, not just with our neighbors. Mommy also did advent with us. She made the advent calendar which tracked every day in December leading up to Christmas. We’d also light candles every Sunday in December leading up to Christmas, culminating in the big homemade candle on Christmas night, which represented Jesus. On the actual Christmas morning, we would get up at the crack of dawn to see what we got. We had unwrapped ‘Santa Claus’ gifts, which always included a board game or two, dolls for me, and cars for Zeke.

These would keep us occupied until after breakfast, when we could open the presents under the tree. There would be candy in our stockings and on the table for us to eat before breakfast. Christmas and Easter always meant early morning candy. Mommy would make fried apples, biscuit, ham with red-eye gravy, fried oysters, and cheese grits for Christmas morning breakfast. I didn’t like all that stuff. I just liked the cheese grits, biscuits, and apples. There’d usually be some type of sweet roll, too. Zeke and mommy really liked the Christmas breakfast, but Zeke would be in a hurry, along with me, for it to be over, so we could open the presents.

After we opened the presents, then we could go to our friends’ houses in the alley, look at their goodies, and invite them to see ours. A new Barbie was always more fun playing with Char and her new Barbies. We also managed to milk a lot more fun out of baby dolls and board games that way.

I don’t remember spending an Easter with our alley friends. We usually went to Cleveland for Easter with Grandmommy Alma and the Cleveland cousins, David, Leah, Julia, and later on, Lara, and early on, Cathy and Buddy. Easter was a big deal there, with Grandmommy’s activity and high status in the church. She was Reverend Andrews’ second wife, and after his death in 1974, we still sat in the front with Grandmommy when we visited Cleveland. She and Aunt Mollye were very active in the church’s ceramics club, and Grandmommy was on the flower committee that decorated the church for the holidays. We’d get a visit from ‘the Easter bunny’ at Grandmommy’s apartment, but the big deal with Easter was the resurrection. There was no misunderstanding about that.

Birthdays were always a big deal at our house. I had several theme birthday parties as I grew older, until I reached 12. That was the year we did the movie, I think, the 12 dancing princesses, with some of my school friends. After 12, we didn’t do any more birthday parties. The one I remember celebrating with the alleykids was the first one I had in the house: 9. In Nashville, it was nothing to have warm weather in February. It was always warm in Nashville. In Kalamazoo, that was a different story. It was a big deal for it to be warm in February. Well, it was warm in 1976—warm enough to have cake outside on the picnic table. We have pictures of that birthday party, with Char and Andrea and the other alley kids smiling and laughing in windbreakers in February.
I don’t remember anything else we did for that birthday.

Zeke had a party with a gun theme. He had silver bb’s in his cake, and he had the cap guns to shoot off. I think that party had Sam and Richie Shaw at it. Was that when her turned 7? I remember going down the alley in December to celebrate Char’s birthday one year. I just remember sitting in the dining room with Char, guests, family, and a cake. I don’t remember what else we did. Funny how the birthdays fade from memory. . .

Halloween was always an alley affair. The Haabs, across Parkwood at a diagonal from us always threw a haunted house. We went in it one time, I think, and decided we could do that, too. Mommy wasn’t too big on all the horrors of Halloween—poisoned candy, razor blades, vandals tearing up everything– (we did come from Chicago)– so she was wary of trick or treating, especially when we were very young.

We threw an alley-wide Halloween party one of those early years. It was at our house. Mr. Urban got some dry ice for the occasion, and Mrs. Urban wore my witch dress (I had been the lead in my 5th grade class Halloween play, a witch who was a teacher), and stirred a cauldron full of the dry ice in our yard, welcoming neighborhood children to our haunted house. K.C. stood under the basement stairs grabbing at people as they walked down to the ‘dungeon.’ Earl, dressed as a mummy, jumped out at people from the supply closet. Jim lay on top of the pool table (he eventually broke it, I think) in the furnace room. He was supposed to be a dead body. Children were blindfolded to feel his ‘body parts.’ We had peeled grapes for eyeballs, spaghetti for brains, etc.
Mommy said some little children were so scared that they never returned to our house for trick-or-treating in later years. After we’d done a little traffic of neighborhood kids, we had cookies and other treats in the family room. It was fun having all the neighbors over, and working together for something even if it was scaring the neighbors. In the years after this, we always went trick-or-treating in a group.

We covered a large part of the neighborhood, usually as far south as Edgemoor, as far west as Wildwood hill. We always went to Law lane, and the alley behind the Upjohn house, where those rich folks gave good candy. Johanna Jacob’s house on Wildwood was always a favorite destination, while we usually avoided Carrie Shaw’s house. She was from my Girl Scout troop. She was nasty, had a big yard with a big fence, and a big dog.
We generally stuck to our side of Westnedge, too, and didn’t even trick-or-treat on Westnedge itself.

Mr. Lett worked at Post Cereal in Battle Creek, and he always handed out tiny cereal samples. It was good to know the people whose homes we visited. Mrs. Lacko, my 5th grade teacher, lived on Edgemoor, a few houses down from Amy Reyberg. We’d always go to her house. We didn’t stay out too long; all the parents were concerned about all the bad Halloween stuff, plus, your feet would get tired, you’d be sick of telling everyone what you were for Halloween (I was a piñata one year), and you’d want to get to eating that candy. Mommy would go through that stuff with a fine-toothed comb, throwing out anything suspect. We’d usually get a pretty large amount on that route we took.