Ashtrays the size of hubcaps

I always say that I was born too late. I wish I had been parenting when my parents were parenting. I long for the poker-for-pennies parties when the Strohs flowed freely, and we kids used to swirl our hands in the blue haze coming from an ashtray the size of a hubcap.

It was the seventies on the Southside of Youngstown. My dad worked as a mechanic at the Himrod company on South Ave; my mom stayed home with us (me and my two sisters). My parents had one car, a burgandyish chevy my mom called Suzybell. We’d walk with the wagon to Fisher Fazio’s on Youngstown-Poland road for groceries and ride our bikes to the Brownlee Woods library.

We lived at the dead end of Chattanooga, and I remember “the woods” before I-680 went in. (This event not only destroyed our wild playground, but it also eventually changed our lives. My family became a “white-flight” statistic, moving to the overpriced suburb of Canfield, but that’s another post).

As the summer nears every year, I desperately miss the city neighborhood of my childhood. Everything in the burbs is so anesthetized. No one has impromptu all night backyard parties like when we were kids. Our parents drank and smoked and talked and laughed, oftentimes dragging the black and white portable television out into the yard using four or five extension cords.

We kids ran the block, playing “ghost in the graveyard” and catching fireflies until we were so tired that we collapsed in piles onto woven plastic lounge chairs. We fell asleep to the sound of our parents’ laughter and the smells of citronella candles and Camel cigarettes.

These days in the burbs, we still have the citronella candles and the beer, but everything is too calm and polite and refined and careful. It always feels to me like we’re stopping just short of really getting to know each other. Just short of genuine and unrestrained interaction.

Maybe it was the time. Maybe it was the place. All I know is that I miss those city summers.