I compare memories of my childhood to a patchwork quilt.  Pieces of this, scraps of this.  Nothing matching or fitting together perfectly.  There is no timeline of events, no way to pinpoint where I was living or with whose care I was in at a specific time.  It is all just a jumbled bunch of hazy memories running through the reel of my mind in sepia tones.

Except for a house.  One house.

Unlike, most of my childhood  homes where a purple Cabbage Patch suitcase often sat in the corner and a sense of  why-bother impermanence lingered in the air – a small green bungalow style house on the Southeast Texas coast offers offered

Home was a green house in small coastal Texas town with a black screen door and no central air-conditioning.  The house was ‘raised’ as most homes in the coastal region are, meaning the foundation is lifted onto blocks and as a child I remember being slightly mortified when my father, or my dog for that matter, would have to venture into the abyss that was under the house.  The house had three bedrooms and two bathrooms one of which had carpeting.  My sisters and I all shared one room, a huge bedroom with painted shut windows, a set of bunk beds, and two twin beds.

The yard was huge and wrapped around the house, with a handful or more of large trees in the front yard that left patches of grassless areas in our yard.  There were ditches, at the end of the yard that housed mudbugs during the summer, also referred to as crawfish, and the neighbourhood kids spent entire days shoving sticks into those holes and then flinging the flailing crustaceans at each other.  When it rained, the torrential Texas rainstorms, the ditches would flood, joining the neighbours’ yards in one big canal of murky water, and we would pile ourselves into imaginary boats made out of old plastic sandboxes and propel ourselves up and down the ditches with an old broomstick handle pretending we were Venetians in a Gondola  in Italy.

The best part about that world was the neighbours, an entire family across the street that I spent years climbing fences with three unruly boys and their sister, my very best friend.   Next to them, lived an elderly couple, The Thompson’s,  with a perfectly manicured yard and a fruitful garden .  Mr. Thompson liked to call my friends and I ‘boys’ no matter how often we protested.  He mowed his yard, shirtless, at least every other day wearing an oversized blue trucker hat and Dickie’s pants.  Their house smelled like baby powder and Mrs. Thompson had a rather large doll collection that must never be touched.  Her sister, Mrs. Mayhew,  lived to the right of my parents, and I remember thinking how odd it was that even old people had sisters.   Mrs. Mayhew grew jalapeños in her backyard and made them into jelly she would pass over the fence to my parents.  Her husband had a ‘wild eye’, one eye with little pigmentation that stared straight ahead at you, frightening us as young children.  During the summers we would hide when he would mow his lawn, turning the curves on his big old green ride-on lawnmower, laughing at us as we peered mortified from behind the branches of trees or over the weeds that almost always grew on my parents side of the fence line.  I still can remember the face of his wife shouting at me through their window, her bouffant hair piled high on top of her head, the time I rang their doorbell only to run in complete fear, “Missssss Haning, if you do that ONE MORE TIME, I am going to call your PAAAAAARENTS!”

Rats were a problem, not big-city rats, or even country mice for the matter, but a collection of pet rats that had previously belonged to Ben down the street until his mother found out they were living in his bedroom.  He had set them loose in our backyard, and my parents spend a good week trying to catch them every time they wondered into our kitchen and then sending me down the street to ‘ask’ Ben to come retrieve his vermin.  I can still remember waking up one sleepy Saturday morning to a herd of smelly pre-adolescent boys chasing a very frightened Pinky around my house.

My first picture of a high school dance was on the sidewalk in front of the house, Mr. Thompson staring disapprovingly at the boys too-low pants and large dress shirts.  My first day of high school, clutching my best friends hand standing over the crushed Oyster shell driveway, still chubby and gap-toothed, excited and naïve and ready.  It was the setting for many Christmases, the births of all my siblings, the death of several beloved pets.  I spent an entire summer there learning to make quiche, zucchini bread, pastries, and once even a mostly overcooked brisket.

The world, for a lovely and very brief period of time, was that street.  From one end to the other, as far as I was permitted to go, the ever expanding stretches of yard, and the bunches of children running barefoot up and down the streets,  scraped knees, backyard forts and playhouses, pitchers full of Kool-aid and tuna casserole.  It was kind, and simple, and intimate in a way  I have yet to see anywhere else and yet long for my own children to have.

It is my most beautiful pieced-together memory.

Katherine’s recipes, random photos, and mostly disconnected thoughts can sometimes be found at, http://internetfruit.typepad.com.

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