A few more Wyoming St. memories

When we moved to Wyoming Street I got a new puppy. A black labrador retriever again. I named her Jet 2. I didn't have her very long. About the time she was fully grown, she was stolen.

I learned to ride a bike there. The street had enough slope so that it was good for coasting downhill. There was very little traffic. Dad bought me a full sized bike. I couldn't reach the pedals. So Dad took off the seat, padded a board that he attached where the seat had been, and wired blocks to the pedals. Dad would put me on the bike, as it was too tall for me to climb onto, and start me down the hill. I'd ride for a short way, lose my balance and crash. That happened over and over. My knees and elbows were covered with scabs before I finally got the feel for it. Even then I often crashed because the bike was just too tall for me.

There was a very poor family a few houses south of us who lived in what was just a shack. The sewer came down the street a couple of years after we moved in. Before that all the houses were on septic tanks. The poor family didn't hook up to the sewer, while everyone else did. I guess they couldn't afford it. They also poured things into their drains that they shouldn't. One night their septic tank blew up. So they had an open sewer hole in their back yard. After a few weeks, the house was condemned. The health department came to condemn the house on Halloween, and I found the Health Department notice on their front door when I went trick-or-treating. The family was gone.

The second house to the south of ours was where the Buckholz's lived. They had two sons just a little older than me. Their house looked like a converted barn. It looked like fun to me. I went there to play once just before Christmas, and we made construction paper chains with homemade glue for their Christmas tree. Mom didn't like me to go there much, because Mrs. Buckholz was infamous on the street for making her own wine, and for drinking a lot of it. She was usually inebriated.

Mr. Buckholz and his sons built a swimming pool in their side yard. They just dug a hole, lined it with cement and filled it with the garden hose. I'm sure the water never got very warm, and it had no circulation, filtration or chlorination. After it sat there stagnant for a few days, the water got pretty bad. They made no easy way to drain it. I think they just used a garden hose to siphon the water out into the back yard. It was a real redneck swimming pool.

Most of the houses on the street had window wells. We boys would get together and go on Black Widow spider hunts. They often made their homes in the window wells, and every couple of weeks in the summer we could take long sticks and visit the window wells, destroying the nests and the spiders. We all thought ourselves very brave. We also tried to scare each other with stories of how far the spiders could leap, and what would happen if we ever got bit.

Another stupid boy game was to catch honey bees from some of the flowering bushes. We did it with our bare hands. We'd try to see who could hold them the longest without getting stung. Of course, to win, you had to hold them long enough so they'd start to sting and then quickly brush them off. Sometimes we waited just a second too long. We were lucky that no one of us was allergic to bee venom.

Summer evenings were often the time to play kick-the-can. Usually we'd play in one of the Olsen's front yards. On hot summer days we often gathered in a cool basement to read comic books. Scott, who lived three doors north of me, had a great collection of Marvel Comics. All mine were Looney Tunes; not cool for a bunch of boys. We also liked to gather in John Wicks bedroom right across the street from me and play Monopoly for hours on hot afternoons. Sometimes we'd even carry games over for days.