Park and other things (revised)

The Park and Other Things

Original writing 1/11/2016 revised 9/2/2021

The apartment house that I grew up in in the Bronx was situated next to a small local park. The park was simple, with some trees and benches in the main part. There was a brook that divided that part from the wooded area, which itself was bordered by the Old Methodist Home for the Aged. There was an asphalt walkway that went up a hill on the other side of the park. On the one side of that walkway was a large hill that, up until someone build a house there, was covered with dirt and rocks and boulders. My apartment building which was built on that hill had two different levels of entrances. You could enter the apartment building through the basement or lobby level which was at the bottom of that hill facing Manhattan College across the street or on the 6th-floor entrance which was at the back of the building facing the uphill side. 

The park and areas surrounding it were used as places to relax for older residents and games like punchball, hide and seek, and hounds and hares (my favorite) by the kids in the area (which sometimes made it difficult for the older residents to relax).  The asphalt walkway was used mostly during the winter months when snow was on the ground as a sled riding course. We would build some speed bumps mid-way through the path not to slow us down but to give us a little lift and speed as we hurtled down the hill. 

Summertime and warm weather didn’t stop us from sledding. Part of the hill where the apartment was on was pretty much a dirt hill. It was pretty steep also. So we would gather old cardboard boxes and sit in them as we slid down the dirt hill. This proved to be more dangerous as our speed was infinitely more uncontrollable than going down a snow hill with a sled that had steering. It was a memorable experience until that person built his house right toward the bottom of our track and terminated our ability to dirt slide. By that time I was older and probably wasn’t doing much sledding anyway.

The boulders on the hill became our forts for war games and hide and seek. 

They were also great places to place chalk arrows for trails when playing hounds and hares. The stone walls that separated the Old Methodist Home and our wooded area, were great in the fall as leaves began to pile up. It was fun jumping off of the 5-foot walls into a pile of leaves. At least it was a lot safer than jumping off the other side of the wall which was probably about 20 feet above a concrete driveway. 

The climbing, jumping, playing, and probably even the rat chasing (which is another story) all make up the memories of the place that I grew up. I miss those spots. I can still see the tree that was first base, the middle of the edge of the sandbox which was second, and the large rock which was third (the one you had to avoid when there was snow on the ground and you were sledding down the walkway heading for it on your sled). Though I don’t have many pictures from back then, the images are etched in my mind where they will remain in my memory photo album that I enjoy visiting as I age.