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Category: neighborhood

On Broadway

On Broadway

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The tune has been in my head the last few days. The tune is there because I was there. On Broadway, that is. Not the part George Benson sings about, not the place where “the neon lights are bright.” Not Times Square Broadway.

I’m talking Upper West Side Broadway. Corner grocers, vacuum cleaner stores, coffee shops. There was a time when I lived there that if I ran out of paper and had to run down to the tiny stationary store to buy some, I hesitated. I would have been on deadline then (I was always on deadline that year) and I knew I would run into at least a couple of people I knew on the way there and back. Could I afford the time to buy the paper and chat with the friends?

The answer, always, was yes.  I had lived there for a few months. And when I walked down Broadway I knew people. I didn’t need neon lights.

Saturday, during my 21-hour visit to Manhattan, I had time to walk from 114th to 77th Street. The sun was bright, the air was warm, the pedestrians were of every size, shape and color.  I didn’t know people to talk to along the way. But I had left one good friend at 113th Street and met another at 77th. My feet flew down the pavement. There was energy and street life. It was good to be back on Broadway.

New Neighborhood

New Neighborhood

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Yesterday, a walk in a new neighborhood: Strolling down a paved path that flanked a busy suburban byway, I crossed under the road through a pedestrian tunnel, automatically plugging my nose as I learned to do in New York, but unnecessarily, since the only whiff I got was of concrete.

The path wound along a creek, where gangs of loose-limbed kids sifted the water, looking for tadpoles. I could see the road I needed to be on, but took a chance that the path would bring me back where I’d begun.

I passed willows that gleamed with the first green of spring. And farther along there were more kids, careening down the path on too-big bikes or too-small scooters. A playground sign that said “For children ages 5-9” had been altered: “For children ages 5-59.” Young mothers threw back their heads and laughed. No one seemed to have a care.

I know that the homes along the path sheltered bankruptcies and infidelities, rebellious teenagers and addled grandparents. It was just that, in that early spring light, these didn’t seem to matter. It seemed like a new beginning, like an Eden.

Old Part of Town

Old Part of Town

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Yesterday I drove to the old part of town, to a D.C. I seldom visit, where the houses are stately and imposing and the yards settled and calm. I was struck, as I often am, by how various neighborhoods and landscapes create different moods.

How wide open and exposed is the world of the outer suburbs, how on the edge of things. I think about the medieval town, walled and protected, houses clinging together for survival. And I see in our wide yards a sort of bravado.

Openness has its appeal, but so does the fenced yard, the closed gate, the hedged garden. There is something in here precious enough to protect — to make you long to be inside.

The Cottage

The Cottage

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Last evening I walked by this house. It’s my favorite in our neighborhood and, as I just learned from a real estate circular, it “SOLD in 7 Days!” It’s one of the smaller models in our subdivision and has an ordinary lot. What makes this house special are the window boxes, the white picket fence, the wrap-around porch and the English cottage garden. In other words, details. Put enough of them together, though, and you have a place that is charming and comfortable and old-fashioned. Ah yes, I have a crush on this house.

The Power of the Porch

The Power of the Porch

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Tonight I was on one of my brief after-dinner strolls when our neighbors called from across the street. They’ve just finished a front porch across the width of their house and they wanted me to see it. So I sat on their porch swing and we talked for 45 minutes. This is remarkable because in 21 years it’s the longest conversation I’ve had with Bob and Donna. In our suburb, as in many, backyard decks and patios are where you sit outside on a pleasant evening. Imagine all those people suddenly flipped, sitting in front of their houses where they can see their neighbors, rather than behind. Then multiply this by millions of people across the land — and you have one way to build community, to bring us face to face with the people we live closest to.

Little Voices

Little Voices

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Just as there are seasons of the suburban street — the rumble of school buses in the fall; the melody of ice cream trucks in the summer — so too is there a life cycle over time — the years of baby cries, followed by those of bicycle tires slapping the pavement, of squeals and yells and parents calling and yesterday (I don’t know from where but I heard it) a dinner bell. 

 For years our street has been quiet. Our children were some of the youngest on the block and when the older kids of neighboring families moved out our kids were left behind to make their own fun. 
 Now a new generation is on the rise. Boys on bikes, girls on scooters, babies in prams. It makes me feel old — and young — at the same time.