My little brother Gideon’s attempt to defend the Board of Realtors (“Can’t we all get along?”) shocked me – you attack one family member, you attack the family – but I now remember that he’s seven years younger and missed out on the great Riverside wars of the early 60′s.
And I’d blocked out my own memories if those days. While it is true, as I’ve said, that I have never actually punched out another human being, we had great neighborhood wars with the boys of the adjoining streets, employing apples, slingshots, the occasional stone but never, although I was adept with same, my bow and arrow. A pair of horse chestnuts slung together as a bolo, however, was always fair.
Michael Hanafee, of Jones Park, had his gang, often aligned with a bully named Byrdie Martin from the corner of Indian Head Road and Willow. They’d come down to Gilliam Lane and Club Road to dominate the territory and we’d fight back. I was probably all of 8-10 years-old during these battles, but I’d join up with older kids like Cobra, my brother Bobby, Tommy French and Mark Heiman and we’d go at it, hurling missiles and whatever we had, driving the blaggards two streets north back to their home base. It was all great fun, although today I suppose we’d all have been rounded up as juvenile delinquents.
And we’d gather allies, too. The Martin / Hanafee crowd drew from Willowmere while our crowd looked to other streets for support, although I don’t remember the Horton brothers from Oak Lane ever joining us – perhaps, living just a block from Byrdie, they were like captive Russian satellites. But Paul Patrick was there, and Jimmy and Phillip Robbins too. Anyway, good times, but Gideon would have been just two, and too young to learn the lesson of defending the clan. Still and all, you must always stick up for family and not “reason”.
