Jack Burns Lives!

The Old Neighborhood

As a young boy, I used to walk around our neighborhood and look at all the houses. There was an interesting assortment, mostly 1930′s style bungalows, and I grew up in the same one my mother did. You almost never hear of that these days.

Three bedrooms and one bath. Nice screened in porch on the front (now glass) with two massive elms in the front yard. Two fig trees in the back with hydrangeas, azaleas and gardenias all around.

The street was quiet, lined with trees and perfect for football games, foot races and riding bikes. I remember my first bike well, a burnt orange model with a silver and white banana seat I eyed with envy during the fall of ’69. My grandmother bought it for me that Christmas. I was seven years old.

It was a quiet neighborhood in 1969. Mostly Catholic, Jewish and Methodist. There was one hippy family with a pet monkey. I seem to recall my dad telling me they weren’t Christians (it must have been that long, Jesus like hair) and that they were dangerous. I don’t remember them having any furniture. Just lots of candles and beads hanging around everywhere. Frankly, they did give me the creeps.

You could walk to everything. Vollintine Elementary, Carl’s Bakery, Overton Park, Sears, Tops Barbecue, the barber shop. Everything was close. People walked to Little Flower Catholic Church and Baron Hirsch synagogue (once North America’s largest). My grandfather’s grocery was in the neighborhood. Nothing is there today but an empty building filled with old ghosts.

On Saturday’s, I’d have a little circuit I’d do, and I still do the same thing today at 44, only the circuit is to different places. Everything but the zoo is gone in the old neighborhood. Carl’s is long gone, the history of the remaining facade only known to a privileged few, since the original sign now stands broken and unreadable.

I’d visit some neighbors and quickly make my way to Carl’s, where the bakery ladies dressed in their white uniforms would always give me a free ladyfinger. Sneak into the zoo via the ditch and talk to my favorite tropical bird, a magnificent white, tufted cockatoo that would mimic my movements and follow me around the glass. He was a good friend, and when I was there, I’d dream of being a wildlife ecologist like Marlin Perkins from Mutual of Omaha’s Wild Kingdom.

I’d try out all the baseball gloves in the sporting goods section of Sears and pretend I was Brooks Robinson making a diving catch. Maybe even try on some baseball pants. They were wool and cotton in those days and hot as hell.

Our team was the Memphis Blues. AA franchise of the New York Mets, who would go on to win the Series in ’69. I was a huge fan and Tom Seaver was my hero. They had another hot shot pitcher back then, just not as well known as he would eventually be. His name was Nolan Ryan.

My dad and I listened to the Cardinals on the radio, although games on the black and white tee-vee were becoming more popular.

Walking down Garland, my first task was to visit a few little old ladies, almost all of which were widows. They were sweet and would always give me a glass of ice water, milk or a Coke and a cookie. We’d sit and chat about my grandmother, school and various other topics. Nearly all of them would become my clients when I turned twelve and started cutting yards. $8 included me sweeping the walk and edging. Cutting the shrubs was $5 extra.

I remember some of the houses seemed warm and inviting. Others seemed dark. They gave off a bad vibe. Forbidding and scary. As I considered each structure, I though about what went on in each room. I’d imagine a sad woman in her room. Standing in front of a mirror, coating her hair with Vo5 and Dippity-do and listening to Classical Gas on the transistor radio.

I envisioned the father sitting in front of the tee-vee. Getting up to change the channel. Sitting back down and taking a swig of Schlitz beer. He’d have on polyester pants and a white t-shirt. Unshaven and with a pot belly.

He beat his kids and his wife.

In the ’70′s, the woman would discover The Way. The man read porn.

Every once in a while, someone would come to a window or a door and look at me looking at them. I’d run. But one day, the super creepy man that lived alone asked me if I wanted to come in. My grandmother, who lived with us, and my parents told me to stay away from him, and I did.

After all my errands, I’d come home about 3:00 and watch Johnny Weissmuller in Tarzan. I’d grab a Coke in a bottle (the only way to drink a Coke) and have a handful of chocolate chip cookies. My friends and I would meet in the street for touch football or for a game of marbles in the dirt. We’d run races down the middle of the street.

In the evenings, I’d catch hundreds of lightening bugs and put them in a jar. Plump, green Junebugs were tied to strings and and would fly around. The sound of the Cicadas remains so completely vivid. It’s the signature sound of the Southern summer.

And then I’d finally come in and climb into bed. I’d fall asleep dreaming of cowboys and how I’d try to stop people from killing Indians and try to make friends. I never understood what they did wrong.

Not much has changed there. I’m still mad about what happened to American Indians, and I’m still wearing cowboy clothes.

Martin Luther King, Jr. was killed the year before, about five miles from my neighborhood. I don’t remember it, but I clearly remember when the first black family, the Williams, moved onto the street. The father was in the military, and they had a son, James, that was my age. We immediately became friends.

James’ father was captured and became a prisoner of war in Vietnam. When I asked my dad what that meant, he explained that James’ father was fighting to protect us from Communists, and they were evil and wanted to change our way of life. This was hard for an eight year old to process, and I remember being more than somewhat confused. I hadn’t seen any Communists in Memphis. And everyone being equal and having the same things didn’t seem too far off from what Mrs. Moody was teaching us in church school about Jesus.

My dad explained “it wasn’t the same,” so I just forgot it and hoped the best for James.

They moved away before his father came back, and I never knew what happened.

By 1976, I was the only white kid on the block and the dynamics had changed. My father explained he had “had it with the niggers” and was moving us and putting me in a “Christian school.” For me, going to this Christian school and eventually leaving Garland was one of the saddest periods of my life.

The school, full of wealthy white kids, came before the move. Two years of visiting their fancy homes in East Memphis and Central Gardens made me ashamed of our little house and neighborhood. The paint was peeling, the screens torn. The yard was basically dirt. My wealthy friends seemed to have everything. Grand, beautiful homes. Lavish vacations. New clothes. Exotic cars.

It wouldn’t be until my thirties that I finally “figured things out” and became proud of my little street and not growing up with a silver spoon in my mouth. I realized that Tony was really a great friend, one of the best I ever had. When I reconnected with him years later at the Midsouth Peace and Justice Center, I felt as if things had come full circle for me.

Tony was such an honored friend that when my pet rabbit Petey died, I had Tony serve as the sole pallbearer at the funeral. I used one of my father’s tool boxes as a casket and we had the funeral on Petey’s hutch. Built by hand, I might add, by myself.

My dear grandmother provided the stability in those formative years. Mom was not well. Several visits to Tennessee Psychiatric and a few rounds of shock treatment didn’t seem to help. She only became more strange. But then she found The Way, and it was all better. At least according to her.

I didn’t really understand The Way any more than I understood why we killed Indians. Although I surmised these two things were somehow connected. But I did understand that somehow my mom had become a kinder, more sane person, so when she gave me clear instructions on how I could become part of The Way, I listened carefully and did as I was told.

As I recall, it was a Wednesday evening in 1972, the night we always had the Fellowship Dinner at First United Methodist. I went to the little two seat chapel on the second floor of the Pepper Building and prayed for god to do the same thing for me that he had done for my mom. I cried because I thought of my mom, how much I had always wanted her to really be my mom and that maybe now I’d really have a mom.

After the praying was finished, I waited for some change. Jesus was supposed to come into my heart, you see. I thought this was pretty profound and hoped that it didn’t hurt.

I waited for thirty years for some monumental change that never came. Neither with me or my mom.

Not long before we both got sucked into The Way, my brother was born. She devoted the rest of her life to him, and I devoted the rest of my life to finding someone else to love. After a lot of false positives, I finally found her in 1984 and eventually repaired things with my mother. I’m happy that I did.

But back to my grandmother, affectionately known as “mawmaw.” As a child, she was my everything. She bought all my clothes. Taught me how to play piano. Taught me how to read and my multiplication tables. She schooled me in table manners and taught me to appreciate theater, Bach and Brahms. She instilled in me the belief that you should always do your best, dress nicely, open doors for people and always say “thank you.” She taught me to write thank-you notes.

She took me to fancy restaurants with her friends, and we always went to Britling’s Cafeteria after church. I remember Mr. and Mrs. Fox were always there, and it was a big highlight to see them, because they always gave me a dollar.

My grandfather died in ’61, and my mother confessed that she essentially just handed me off to my grandmother when I was born. We were there for one another, and no matter how bad I was, she loved me more than anything on the planet. I loved her, too.

At 44, I look back fondly to those days on Garland Street. I miss it and will never forget it. I miss the simple pleasure of just being a boy, wandering, playing and dreaming of being a man. And now that I’m a man with my own family, I find myself trying to recreate some of those simple pleasures of my youth. Sometimes I can, especially in my garden where I can just sit quietly and watch the chickadees, honeybees, dragonflies and bats. I’m just as fascinated by their lives today as I was as I was in ’69, and I still love animals, probably even more.

But most of the time, life seems tarnished. I know too much about life. I know that there are really evil people and fear for the world my children are growing up in. Yes, there’s so much beauty and a lot of good, but the world is different today. Or at least it seems that way.

Do we all nostalgically look back to the “good old days?” Where they really better? I think baseball was better. I don’t remember hearing about steroids. Willie Mays or Barry Bonds?

I don’t remember sprawl. I remember hearing frogs at night, but I don’t hear them much since lawn chemicals destroyed their habitat. Music was better. That’s not even a debatable point.

We walked and road bikes. Children played outside. We read a lot of books and were entertained by simpler things. Getting a new car was a big deal. A lot of families only had one car. Now most families have three or more.

I think it was better, but we can’t go back, can we. We can only go forward, carrying our memories with us and making new ones.

Onward.