On launching, landing

Album listened to during this writing: "Bring on the Snakes" by Crooked Fingers

When I was a kid, I remember taking scraps of wood and random nails I found in my dad's toolbox and building a bike ramp. I didn't have any designs drawn up or any plan at all really, but I had a vague idea that if the ramp pointed upwards, my bike would launch off of it.

I grew up in I guess what you'd call a cul-de-sac, but it wasn't really a cul-de-sac, because from what I understand about cul-de-sacs, they loop around and there are only houses on one side of them. This was like a horseshoe with houses on both sides of the street. So I guess a cul-de-sac that is stretched out and has houses in the middle, too. 

Of all the houses on my street, about half of them had kids my age. I thought it was normal to have neighbors whose doors I could bang on and say, "Can Stephen/John/Michael/Sarah/Michael/Amy/Greg/Darren/Jay/Andy/Tara/Ashley come out and play?"

And that's all you had to say to start an adventure. Or a basketball/football/baseball game.

Or to get someone to help you build a bike ramp.

Now I live on a really busy street in East Nashville. There's a lot of noise. A lot of cars. A lot of dogs barking. All the time.

But I don't know my neighbors very well. (I'll write about them in future blogs.)

This afternoon, I came home and my next-door neighbor was grilling some hot dogs and hamburgers and the smell made me miss nights on my porch as a kid. 

To me, back then, Garden Terrace, the name of the street I lived on, was the world. And at the beginning of spring, you could smell not only what was on your family's grill, but what was on everyone else's. 

A few years after my parents bought our house there, the gas company offered to rig up grills for anyone who wanted to pay to just extend a grill off of the gas line. Most of the people in our neighborhood bought in. 

That, combined with the high number of kids on the street, created a constant sort of block party on our street. On Fourth of July, everyone broke out their best fireworks. On summer nights, us kids stayed out until our parents called out the front door for "Jeeeeeeee-nnnnnnnyyyyyy or Wiiiii-iiiiilllll or Taaaaaayyyy-loooooor."  Southern moms have a great way of turning every name into two syllables. I think they mostly name their children two-syllable names so they're easy to call (not yell) from the front door when the kids have ignored the other sign that it's time to come in: the street lights coming on.

Sometimes us kids would go up a few blocks to a big vacant lot and organize these huge football games. We didn't have pads or helmets, but we played tackle. (We also played baseball with a tennis ball and you could just throw the ball at someone - rather than tag them - to get them out.)

I remember in between plays at those football games wondering if one day everyone would grow up and move away. And I had these fantasies that we would all come back as adults and play one more game.

But since I left, I haven't looked back much. 

And I've talked with several groups of friends since then about politics and religion and lots of other shit that doesn't matter much. And during those conversations, I've usually tried to pretend that I've always known about great writers and great thinkers and independent music and underground films. And that I've always had all of this figured out. But I haven't.

Mostly, I'm still standing in my front yard, trying to build a ramp out of rusty nails and broken boards.

I still don't have a plan.

I still don't know where I'm going.

Or how I'll land.

Or if it will hurt.