The Rocks

Ray Bradbury was writing about his hometown of Waukegan, IL when he wrote his novel, Dandelion Wine, set in a fictional town called Greentown. It is a novel about remembrances, and loving your life enough to want to make lists so as not to forget important memories. It is also about coming to know that life is so fragile. Bradbury lovingly describes Waukegan (Greentown) as the paradise of his youth.

Similarly, in our neighborhood in the 1950’s and 1960’s on North Henderson Avenue in Cape Girardeau, MO, my friends and I had a landscape offered to us that would have made us the envy of kings. Henderson Avenue lays along the western edge of the campus of Southeast Missouri State (then) College. We could daily enjoy its spacious verdant hills. The college tennis courts were our fuzz-ball stadiums. The wide sidewalks were our bike trails. In fact, my friend Jimmy and I found a bike loop through the campus that started at his house and ended at his house that was downhill nearly all the way, defying physics. To the north we had the college dairy farm with its wild woods and endless meadows and crawdad filled creeks (watch your step on the cow patties); to the west, a few blocks of shaded streets led to Cape’s finest city park, Capaha Park; and just a few blocks to the south, Broadway with its thriving franchise-free variety of businesses. A location scout for a “coming of age” movie could not have found a better setting. Our activities naturally followed the seasons: baseball to football to basketball to sledding and back around again. The Crowes and the Johnsons both had whiffle ball fields and basketball courts, each with enough quirks to favor the home team. The Limbaugh’s backyard was large, flat and absent of trees and was made for tackle football. These gritty games were unsupervised tests of toughness; always an odd mix of dread and thrills for me.

Near the center of all of this activity was a curious pile of large, gray rocks, next to the gravel road leading to the college farm, just on the edge of college President Scully’s residence and grounds, and across the street from Dr. John T. Crowe’s house. It was a random jumble of undoubtedly forgotten and unused stone that was blasted out of Houck field’s quarry, the same as was provided for many of the older campus’s building exteriors. Why this pile was left in this spot is a mystery. To us, it would come to be known simply as “the rocks”.

The rocks would serve many practical purposes for the kids in the neighborhood. First, it was a central meeting place for other activities, as in “meet you at the rocks, bring your bat and glove”. It was a strategic common ground, a neutral site, always devoid of parents. It was also a “base” for holding prisoners in our all-day-team-hide and seek/war games we called ‘Hideaway’. Finally, because it sat much of the day in the shade, it would serve as a cool place to sit and talk in the summers when there were no timetables. I can still see our bicycles randomly splayed on the ground around them. “Thanks for the Kool-Aid, Mom.”

From this place, our summer days were often launched: Indian ball or ‘baseball 500’ at Capaha Park—(giving a wide berth to the crazy man’s house, of course); fuzz-ball at the college tennis courts; bike hikes to the public library and around town; excursions to Werner’s, Vandeven’s or Fischer’s for candy; the College Barber Shop for haircuts—(quick return trips there when our moms weren’t satisfied); side trips to Kinder’s house on Park Street with its deep green tunnel-canopy of trees; trips to the abandoned seismic study building known to us as Frankenstein’s Castle (did they black out the windows to scare the crap out of us?). The cool, damp wine cellar at the eastern edge of the Home of the Birds; Houck Stadium to watch the Indians’ football practice, or the sometimes-violent fraternity tackle games behind Kent Library; smoking grapevines near the college farm creek, and when we had the courage, hacking our way through the Tangley Woods. The labyrinth of secret paths, worn clear over the years through the dense dark ravines connecting Henderson Avenue to the West End Blvd and Price Drive neighborhoods.

I have tried to explain to others in recent months why I am becoming so nostalgic these days. It is futile, because I don’t really know myself. I do know this: the image I can conjure up of The Rocks is a catalyst for lots of other memories. I will leave it at this: this image has become more than a perfect metaphor; it is a genuine touchstone for me when I am trying to remember the stories of my youth.

The Rocks can now exist only in my memory. My lifelong and fellow Henderson neighborhood friend, David Crowe, took a righteous picture of the rocks before they disappeared. It hangs in my home office. Thanks, Crowe, for this and loaning me your copy of Dandelion Wine all those years ago, underlines and margin notes and all.  Rest in peace, old friend.