The Avenue That We Call Home

The street lamps on Winch Avenue didn’t just flicker, they crackled and waned from the lack of life. A loud buzzing however ascended, small flies swarmed against the frosted glass beating at it until each fell. Worming at the pavement, they twitched and flopped against the frigid concrete in the aftershock of their deaths. Winch Avenue stood bearing silence among its reckon. A road that many people had called home for several years, lessened in its sole attempt to be recognized. Growing in a way that no one ever thought was even possible. 

         It was a hot and humid day in Brickle County. The kind of heat that drove everyone so mad, they resorted to their porches for packs of cigarettes and lemonade. Watching them throw the last of their buds into the street was intriguing, I mean this was the community after all even if it was disgusting. Uncle Vernon wasn’t paying attention and threw his bud from the porch, all the way to the road, and shot Darle Kimpson right in the eye. The only kid that was standing in the street, bouncing his half deflated white and red basketball.

         He stumbled backwards wailing in pain, his eye completely swollen shut. Sweat dripped off his forehead and made a puddle in one of the crater like pot holes, I wish I could say that he was going mad because of the heat, but that simply wasn’t the case. I had known Darle my whole entire life, and the kid just wasn’t one for common sense. One summer we went down to Crickley Creek, and it wasn’t exactly what you would call, enjoyable. Actually, most would have called it, a “reason to institutionalize the unpredicted.”

Crickley Creek

         The skies of Winch Avenue stood none the less bile and the farthest from blue I had ever seen. The clouds hunched over and fumed as if they were suffering from a fire, and today was what we called, a “good day.” It was still one of the hottest days of the year, and finding a way to cool off was hard and sometimes felt impossible. Crickley Creek, while it’s humidity was nonetheless fluid and balmy, was the best place in the world to be on a day like this. We went there to gush and sink our toes in the cool mudded bank, well at least that’s what I went there for. 

Darle Kimpson sat on the edge of the slippery creek, his butt and legs engorged in the inhabitable brook of surely infested waters. He toppled backwards, his quake of flab following closely behind him. A wet thud came shortly after by two more sharp plops as he spread his arms out on both sides. Darle began making snow angels in the microscopic organisms that were most likely eating away at his brain cells. With his eyes closed, he mocked the blistering sun with a smile as sweat beamed off his nose and salted the fresh water stream. It was one of the most disgusting things I’d ever seen. I felt like I should have gone and thrown up by a tree or something because of the foul smells he lifted from the underway, or maybe it was just him I honestly couldn’t tell.

Ever since that day I’ve only ever seen Darle Kimpson in one way, ‘troubled’. This was the reason he fit in so well on Winch Avenue, because he stood out like a duck with an elephant trunk. I on the other hand have trouble fitting in, I don’t know if it’s because I’m normal or what, but everyone around here is always staring at me for some reason. I've come to the conclusion that maybe they’re not staring at me, but at everything around me. At the fact that my dad left five years ago.

Lifes not always gonna be what you want, but sometimes it’s what you need

I can’t be a hero in this town, because there’s simply nothing to save. Everything was broken beyond belief and quite frankly I didn’t even think I was qualified enough. How do you even pull something great out of nothing anyways? That’s when I realized that I didn’t need to be anything special, I just needed to be me. Because at the end of the day all i’ve got is this town, and at least I know it will never leave me like dad did. 

Sure I’ve done heroic things before, I saved the Lindford’s water bill by turning off their hose in the backyard. They just left it on after a while because it was the only relief they had from their blistering sunburns from the long day. It was kind of like my way of ‘helping’ the neighborhood, and it felt good to enact good deeds, especially without even telling people. 

It took awhile for me to even realize that I was realistic, that a hero doesn’t have to have superpowers or a cape. That right here right now, the heroes in our real lives are the ones who never leave, even if it’s the most unbearable town they’ve only ever lived in. My mom is my hero, and Darle, the Lindfords and Uncle Vernon. To me this is home and how I was brought up, and I think I'm okay with it.

Well, don’t worry about me. Brickle county is always going to be here with it’s blistering eye, burning cigarettes and organism infested creeks. But one day I’ll be older than I am now, and I’ll look back at everything I did in this town, and I’ll think about the many ways it made me the person that I wanted to be. And as much as I don’t want to say it, maybe I won’t miss the way things used to be as much. People are going to disappoint me no matter where I go, but it’s what I do with that disappointment that counts the most. Winch Avenue has given me a vision of the future that I want to be in, it’s given me something to dream about.