Where it all began…how dare you.
Springfield’s Enos Park would be transformed into a thriving neighborhood with a mix of rehabilitated historic homes, new housing, restaurants and stores under a long-term master plan that will be unveiled tonight.
It’s my childhood neighborhood - the EXACT place where I spent most of my early life (1st-11th grade). My elementary school was right around the corner next to the old arts center where my creativity was first given a chance to grow (I hold that art’s center among my most cherished places). I lived on 7th street, one block down from Enos Park - that park, smack in the middle of my house and my best friend’s house, was the location for:
…At least 2 dozen birthday parties.
…The location of my first kiss and first boyfriend make out session.
…Countless boring summer day laze abouts.
It’s a mix of elation, jealousy, a how-dare-you along with a thank-god-it’s-about-time going on all at the same time in my head. It is the strangest feeling.
Why the how dare you feelings? I wear my childhood and that neighborhood like a badge of honor and now, that memory, once this “master plan” is initiated, will be all but forgotten.The neighborhood that made me a strong, independent, creative, persistent person will give way to folks who have never known that struggle.
It was a poor neighborhood…a violent neighborhood filled with more ethnicity than the whole of the midcoast. We had a whore house across the street, various drug houses up and down that 3-4 block stretch and at least two honest-to-God homicides on my street (drug induced don’t count). One murder - the body was dumped in the trash not 5 houses from my yard and the other…an older women was cut to pieces one night (that was a whole block away) and robbed.
I was almost kidnapped in my alley by a man driving a widowless van. Every third house was boarded up. Every single bike I ever owned was stolen from our back porch - along with all of our porch furniture. Our garage was set on fire during a 4th of July rampage (which usually consisted of our entire welfare receiving block shooting of bags and bags of fireworks in the street). The next morning, you would wake to a street littered with burnt punks, spent roman candles and empty and broken 40’s everywhere.
One of the coldest winters in memory, a house caught on fire ON Christmas eve (from a kerosene heater - remember those?). It was so cold out that the water from the hoses kept freezing and the fire ravaged the entire house, included all the presents, clothes, personal items of this multi-child family. That burnt out house stayed boarded up for years and years before finally being bulldozed.
Our neighbor across the street would routinely fall off his front porch and roll into his yard in a drunken stupor. My next door neighbor to the left was a family where the insest was so apparent that no one wondered who was the father when the 14 year old became pregnant. The neighbor to the right was a family where the daughter was taken away due to child abuse by a drunken strung out mother.
I think the most painful thing for me…is that the memories of my best friend will be all but erased. Shannon, my best friend from 1st grade on, died a couple of years ago from a heart attack. After I moved from Illinois, she was the ONLY person I kept in contact with…and with her gone and the neighborhood soon to be transformed - I feel like my childhood is going with it.
Sorry this is so negative…when I read the article about the development plan and was immediatly overjoyed at the opportunity. Guess I’m just hurt that I will have to let all of that negative past go.
Probably time I do.
