Troy Poorman
On the corner of 3rd Street and 92nd Avenue in Blaine, Minnesota, is the house I grew up in. When I think back on the years I spent there, many great memories flood my mind. The neighborhood I lived in was a great place for a child to grow up. On our block lived my brother and me and six or seven other boys that were all my brother’s age, which was two years older than me, but they still let me tag along and play games with them. The best memories I have from those days are the times we spent at the dirt track, the games we played, and the forts we built.
The most constructive activity my gang did was building a dirt bike track just down the street on an empty lot. None of us knew if anyone owned the lot, so we just started working. We cleaned up all of the tree branches, leaves, garbage, and anything else that needed to be picked up. Young boys do not often clean up anything without being told, but we did it.
Once it was cleaned, we started designing the oval-shaped dirt track, including burms and a jump at the end, which led to a few bumps and bruises. We called the place “The Track,” and we would often tell our friends to meet there and hang out. We kept that piece of property neat and clean as if it was our own (maybe because we thought it was our own property). When we race, three or four of us would go at a time, even though the track was only wide enough for two to safely go at one time. The track is one of the best memories I have of the old neighborhood.
Another memory is the games we played growing up in that neighborhood. My house was on the corner of the two streets that my friends lived on, so it was the best place for my friends and I to meet and to play games. The games we played most were basketball and football, with baseball close behind.
I remember getting up at eight in the morning on Saturdays during the school year and going out to play baseball or football with my friends. My yard was the biggest, so it worked very well to play and have fun there. We also played games in the dark, like flashlight tag, ghost in the grave yard, and any other game we knew, or else we would just make up a new game. In one game we made up, one person hid, and all of the others tried to find him, and whoever found him they would go hide as well; this would go on until only one person was left running around looking for people.
In winter, we had snowball fights and played king of the hill on the big snow piles the snow plow made. At another friend’s house, Josh and Jake Nicholson, we loved jumping on their trampolines, doing tricks, and trying to outdo the other guy’s trick. In the winter, we would play hockey in their backyard; they would flood the yard and then it would freeze overnight so we could play. One of the last and greatest memories of my old neighborhood was building forts with my friends.
As a 10 or 11 year old boy, nothing was more fun than building a fort where only you could go and hang out with friends. In the winter we always built snow forts from the piles of snow we had in our yard and around the neighborhood. We would sit in those forts for hours just talking and hanging out.
One fort I built with my brother was high up in the big willow tree in our back yard. We did not have the knowledge or resources to make a good, solid, and safe tree fort, but we did what we could. First we found where we wanted our own fort and then proceeded to haul up random boards we found in the garage or the shed, hoping that our dad had no use for them. We then got the nails and hammer and started nailing the boards to the tree limbs. When it was all done, our fort consisted of about six or seven boards laid across two limbs and nailed down, without a railing or any other safety guards. For a while even after we moved, those boards were still up there.
Do you remember your old neighborhood? I do, and it was the best of times. My greatest memories are from my old neighborhood, and I wouldn’t trade those memories for anything.
