3514 West Mariposa

3514 West Mariposa

 Back in the day, before the city grew to over 4 million people, before urban sprawl into the foothills of the utopian McDowell mountains, and before the segregation of folks living in South Phoenix was openly addressed, the extent of our world was life in our own middleclass subdivision, on our own street.

 Mariposa. The extra-long city block in Phoenix stretched under the homes of high school teachers, the Phoenix Sun’s basketball coach, Title officers, bookkeepers, and more. At one time, in the late “60’s, these were model homes. Green lawns in spite of the 113-degree summer heat made people proud of their homes on Mariposa. We were proud of living on that street. We were an upstanding, hardworking, friendly yet mind-your-own business neighborhood. And while growing up, that’s how everything remained in my memory of 3514 West Mariposa.

  As a six-year-old kid I could stand in the front yard of our house and look down the scorching sidewalks to one of the biggest high schools in the city at the other end of our street. Walking all the way down the street was exciting according to the mind of a latch-key kid.

   My parents, who were Catholics from the deep south especially generally kept to themselves. So, we didn’t meet our neighbors too often. That was ok though, because it allowed my mom to name them from afar, which was kind of amusing.

  The people directly across the street were hard to figure out. A guy and two women who all looked alike all the way to their platinum hair. Their poodles even looked like them. They were very slender; therefore, Mama labeled them “the Skinnies.”  Most of the family referred to them by that name for years, until my brother-in-law who didn’t know that wasn’t really their name, had an encounter with the guy and innocently called him “Mr. Skinny” to his face.

  Diagonally across from us was a high school teacher with a drinking problem. Every night he would leave in his VW bug and return home super late. He staggered into his house only after stopping to pee in the front yard. He didn’t get a name; we were just told to stay away from there.

 One more house down beside him was a family who owned a fried chicken joint. The kid, Joe, would often come play football with my brother. Mama dubbed him “Chicken Joe.” Further down the street the family of the Phoenix Sun’s coach got the name, - well, - “The Phoenix Sun’s Coach” kids, or people.

  The two neighbors directly on either side of us were privileged to be called by their real names. Only by necessity though. To the right of us was an old retired couple, Mr. and Mrs. Emerson. They had an R.V. in the yard of which I longed to explore but never got to. Their front yard was filled with clover instead of grass. We would sneak over and run our feet through the cool clover sometimes. Mr. Emerson was a tall gentleman but quite portly and was always in blue-jean overalls with one strap hanging off. I think that was because he couldn’t fit in anything else. They were nice people.

  The folks to the left of us were the Stetsens. Mama didn’t like them for some reason and especially didn’t like their son- a red-headed adopted child. He played football with my brother too, but happened to be the lucky one to always dump the ball on Mama’s flowerbed just as she was coming out the door. Poor kid never had a chance with her because of that.

  Us kids were really not aloud outside in the front yard unless the older kids or Mama and Daddy were home. We didn’t have many toys, so the three youngest kids, one of which was me, had to be constantly creative to stay occupied.

  When we played outside in the backyard, we liked to play farm. The empty coke bottles were chickens, and the two partially deflated rubber balls were the dogs.

 Sometimes we’d get lucky and Mama would bring home a big empty refrigerator box for us to play in. We made a club house out of it for days. Otherwise, on peak heat summer days we played in the sprinkler or the plastic pool. Sometimes Mama told us to put Dreft baby laundry soap in the water so we would be considered bathed when it was all done.

   The memories on Mariposa were top notch for what went on inside the house at 3514. We didn’t know it, but we were kind of poor, on the lower side of middleclass. Looking back that wouldn’t have been too hard for very many to figure out. There we were, seven kids and both parents in a 1500 sq ft home, with one T.V. (no remote invented yet). In fact, we had to be pretty sneaky to change the T.V. station after Daddy fell asleep in his chair at night. Many times, we almost made the crawl across the room to the T.V. console when he snored horrendously and woke himself up just in time to catch us switching the channel. Otherwise, the three little ones, as we were called, would stay up late many nights playing board games. Who cares that I couldn’t read yet, it was still fun somehow.

  Other adventures included secret clubs. The three of us always had a club going and were usually spying on any of the older folks in the house. Daddy even saved us his Crown Royale boxes to use as special spy cases. For some reason unbeknownst to us, we were never allowed to take those boxes outside to play with the other kids.

  There were many different tastes in music under one roof on Mariposa. Somewhere in the house a radio was always playing.  

  At six years old, I was able to sing along with some of the best of that time; the Beatles, the Mamas and the Papas, Burt Bacharach, Dione Warwick, Dianna Ross and the Supremes, and still watch Hee Haw with Daddy on Sunday evenings.

  One of my older brothers, Bill, had a very pristine stereo, and he amazingly trusted me to use it. He taught me how to set the album on the turntable without touching it and how to set the needle on the record without dropping it. I spent hours sometimes listening to and singing with his music.

 Life wasn’t without drama though. The older siblings seemed to constantly have a feud going on over music or invasion of privacy or something. We younger ones would fight over who got first choice on the T.V. mostly.

  One summer, I wrote a novel. I think I was seven by then. I patriotically drew the American flag on the front sheet. Then I wrote one page on each person in our family. I covered things like whose posters were taped upside down in the bedrooms (mostly I think it was my sister Margaret’s Ringo Starr). I wisely annotated that one or more of my siblings were born at “a very early age.” When it was all finished, I titled it, “The Togetherness Nightmare.” So goes the saying, “out of the mouth of babes.”

  Alas, and as the 70’s began to roll into the distance, the togetherness loosened up. Sibling after sibling moved out of the house and got married. The constant noisy whirlwind was settling down. Except for holidays which were always a huge event, as well as Dallas Cowboy football games. Mama would always prepare a feast for whatever the occasion. Now nieces and nephews started arriving on the scene which added a new dimension of liveliness to the element.

  But on regular evenings, the dinner table was quieter now. I started to feel a little displaced. Everything seemed to slow down. My company evolved into the newest T.V. sitcoms: Laverne and Shirley, Happy Days, and more heartwarming, The Waltons.

  Even though there were fewer people in the house, it started to seem smaller inside the older I got. I wondered how we had all fit. The jaunt to the end of the street also got shorter. The city’s most popular high school was shrinking. There were newer suburbs on the outskirts of town with brand new schools and shopping malls. Now I really felt left behind. Everyone started their own lives, and soon it would be my turn.

  Even still, that house was our anchor. This was evidenced by the fact that there would always be news of who was “coming home” next. Everyone still referred to it as home, so therefore it was.

  Years having gone by, along with some of the siblings as well as Mama and Daddy, going back to visit the old neighborhood had only one thing left that was still exactly the same. That was the scorching heat. Houses were smaller, their paint color had changed many times over, and now it isn’t even a safe place to be.

  As an adult, I was forced to see changes. The undeniable facts that strangers lived there now. The news broadcasts mentioned the rise in crime in that area. Houses weren’t being kept up with pride of ownership. The view was shocking and sad.

  Yet, what I saw just didn’t connect for me. In my heart I knew, that’s not my home. That’s not where I grew up. Where I grew up never seemed to change. At least in my memory; the memory that 3514 West Mariposa would always be home.