GOING BACK

It's not a street you would find yourself on accidentally. Unless you were visiting a friend or a relative, you'd miss Red Bud Drive. Memories of my growing up in the big white house on the tucked-away street lined with redbud trees are warm, sheltering ones. We were seven miles from downtown, and not even a part of Dallas when my parents put their blood, sweat and tears money down on the American Dream. A community separate and apart, we had our own septic systems and water wells, and the middle of the street was a perfect place to watch fireworks from the Cotton Bowl. For fifteen years the neighborhood was my life: a short bike ride to school, one block more to church; a short walk across the railroad tracks to the drug store, the beauty shop, the garage, the dentist, the doctor, and the grocer. Down the street were my two best friends, Mickie and Celia, and in houses on both sides lived my first loves, Darrell and Buddy.

This was a time when the constant neighborhood noise came from the shriek of a child, the bark of a dog or the clackety-clack of the train wheels. That clacking become to me a soothing lullaby that mere visitors to our neighborhood could never get used to. You planned trips across the tracks with the train schedules in mind to avoid being late, but if you were caught, a game of counting train cars was used as an arithmetic lesson.

I remember boarded up houses even then, with overgrown lawns and rotting porches. In the old house across the street, men who rode the rails would gather to wait for the next freight train or to sleep. We'd smell their tobacco and hear their quiet singing, then laughter, then louder voices, then glass breaking as they emptied their bottles. More than once we woke to sirens when fires to chase away the chill of night caught the trash and weathered wood of the floors. Before the acrid odor of smoke was clear, the hobos had left the place they'd called home for the night.

When I was 17 we moved "across the tracks", and I never ventured back to that old house. As a teen-ager, the dilapidation and squalor of the neighborhood had become an embarrassment to me, and the memories of a carefree childhood were replaced with desires for bigger, newer, costlier. I left Dallas for college, started a career on the West Texas plains and, returning to the Metroplex, settled in the white bread suburbs rather than the city.

As I changed, so did the neighborhood. Buckner Children's Home sold its farmland and Skyline High School was built. Kids with too much time and not enough money roamed the neighborhood at lunch, and bars began to replace shutters on the windows.

The fields and woods and creek where we took picnic lunches and swung on grapevines were cleared and leveled and covered with new houses which stood in mocking contrast to the World War II-vintage cottages just across the road. The narrow gravel roads were widened and paved, traffic lights were installed, and the sounds I grew up with were overpowered by horns and curses and squealing tires.

As we age, we color our memories with the crayons that are the brightest: I tried to forget that the old house was ever an embarrassment and told myself on many occasions that I should go back to Red Bud Drive. That I should drive the streets I walked and biked, and breathe again the memories of youth. I should once more let myself be a part, if only for an afternoon, of the place that affected me profoundly. But I never did. Trips to or through Dallas were too hurried or to a different part of what had become such a huge city.

A recent workshop at Skyline High School allowed for no excuses. I was to spend a day within rock-throwing distance of my youth, and after almost thirty years away, it was time to go home again. I wanted to walk through the house, to touch its soul and to relive that wonderful time. Knowing the owners would probably think me a thief or mad, I dug out old photographs of me, my family, and the house as proof that I'd really lived there.

As I turned onto Red Bud Drive, I was immediately struck by how narrow it was. Trees hugged the broken asphalt, and branches hung heavily across the tiny street. I drove slowly, identifying Celia's house and the house where Mickie's daughter now lives, the Leavells, the Hortons, the Moores. . . wait, I'd driven right past our house! It was so small, now covered with brown siding. Two huge trees in the front yard almost completely shielded the house from view. The sidewalks were so overgrown that you hardly knew they were there, and a tall wooden fence surrounded the house.

And there were no more redbud trees! What I remembered as a lovely parkway lined with redbuds was now patchy brown grass and weeds. I got out of the car, photos in hand, and tried to open the tall gate, reinforced by a carefully placed board. I saw a car, a huge dog food dish, and a washtub. I started to open the gate three times before I decided it best that I leave the residents in peace. They had protected themselves well inside that old house and didn't need me to wander into their home. They could do without my exclamations of how tiny the house seemed, or how shabby, or how old. They didn't need to hear of my memories, for they were building memories of their own.

I drove up and down the street, drinking in what I saw. Here and there were signs of life. The "hobo house" had bright white paint and sky blue shutters. The Ridenour porch, where Darrell gave me my first kiss, was bright with flowers. But some things hadn't changed. The street still ended in a tangle of huckleberry bushes, even though the "craw dad hole" beyond it was now an industrial park. The boarded up homes of my youth were the same. The Seaholm house, where many a New Year's Eve had been spent with the adults dancing to the radio and the children playing dolls in the bedroom, appeared years vacant. The Horton house looked just as it had thirty years ago when we'd climbed out its upstairs windows and balanced over the wide porch.

I drove up Urban Street, across the tracks and into what had been our little downtown. And it saddened me. Urban Drug was still there, but the theater was now a hardware store. There were a few other shops, heavily fortified with bars and chains, but too many storefronts stared vacantly through the boards onto the road. Commerce died with the proprietors, and no one cared to breathe life back into the area. There were no cars on the street, and not a soul in sight. I felt as if I were in a ghost town in the middle of the city.

I drove over to the school, and circled it in sadness. Urban Park Elementary had once been the proud Peacock Military Academy, and there was a rich heritage in the old building. Now it had a forboding appearance, protected by a fence and covered with graffiti. Portable classrooms stood behind it, evidence of children still in the neighborhood; but I saw no one. No laughing children on bicycles or skateboards, no teachers preparing for the next day, no parents coming to volunteer. At the bus stop, the place where I gained my freedom for a Saturday afternoon at the Public Library downtown, an old man waited, stooping in the sun.

Across the street was the fire station, where the civil defense siren still stood. I remembered the nightmares I had about Russians in black cars carrying huge guns, and how daddy and I protected mama and the baby from their assault. The nightmares began after the siren was tested, lasting even into adulthood and glasnost.

The church was next. The "Urbandale Christian Church" that daddy lovingly cut out of tin and mounted into the rock of ages still graced the front lawn. The place of our baptisms and marriages and funerals appeared to be the only constant, unchanged over time. Still, there were no people. A few cars hurrying by, but no children, no women pushing carriages, no scarved widows carrying groceries.

As the sun began to set and the lights on Military Parkway blinked on, I was reminded of where I was. The bars and fences had probably been added to the little houses and stores for a reason. I made my way west to the freeway, and headed back to the suburbs, where we also lock ourselves in at night.

As I sat in my evidence-of-success home, behind locked and bolted doors and with a big dog at my feet, I thought about the families on Red Bud Drive. A news flash reported that a gunman drove down the alley behind my school, shooting through the neat white houses. I saw bullet holes in the window and the wall by the front door. . . and through that door, the playground with graffiti on the backboards. The reporter explained symbols identifying the gangs now stalking the neighborhood. I remembered a gang-related shooting at Samuell High School a few years ago, and a racial riot in the school cafeteria only recently -- my alma mater!

I can't seem to shake the mood of sadness that I've carried around with me since going back to Red Bud Drive. My visit has brought me face-to-face with problems I'm too busy, too tired, too scared to dwell on. Just as today's children are missing the extraordinary experiences of neighborhood, missing the sense of belonging and missing childhood, I miss the redbud trees.

I searched for someone to blame for the gangs now roaming the streets I walked, and biked, and loved. Gangs driving people indoors. I tried to blame poverty, but Red Bud Drive was only scratching out an existence 40 years ago. We were poor in resources, but we were rich in family and community and tradition -- and we were all the same. If a different world was out there, we rarely saw it. The images on television, for those who had TV, were limited: Lucy and Desi lived in an apartment and the Lone Ranger didn't have a home.

I tried to blame more diversity in the community, but forty years ago we embraced the Diaz family and the Feins and the Washingtons. They were a part of us, and many of them continue to live there.

Could I blame the changes in society? My universe was, and still is, centered in family, church, school, and community. My childhood was one of many parents and teachers: everyone played the role. Do children today hear that proud refrain: "I knew you even before you were born?"

And who can I blame for the redbud trees?