See it here: https://issuu.com/bhamkidsandfamily/docs/bluff_park_neighborhood_reader_-_mayjune_2025/28

I looked out my front window and counted twenty-six people.

It wasn’t a holiday. No one’s birthday. No special occasion at all. Just a regular ole Tuesday.

Twenty-six people.

Not all were kids. There were adults entwined in the mess, whether wrangling or oblivious.

I haven’t bothered counting again since that day, but at any given time, there are crowds, and they are usually adolescents. Some of them I’ve never seen before, but most of them are neighbors from as far as Crest Lane.

I don’t love crowds, even if I love individuals. Therefore, Winter—when we all hole up and don’t see one another (or the sun) for a couple of months – is not so bleak for me.

But as Spring makes its first few seasonal debuts, albeit deceptively, a cluster of six houses on Park Terrace might as well share a front yard.

Even I, grouchy hermit that I am, have been known to make appearances occasionally, without urging, if you can believe it.

I did not grow up in Bluff Park, but I’ve discovered a steady theme about this place: the desire never to leave it. Those raised here want to be buried in the cemetery where Alford meets Valley, and their childhood memories are pleasant at worst.

Maybe the prospect of being fondly reminiscent of the past is not that far-fetched. Still, it’s more than profound for a kid who spent most of his childhood in an old, green, single-wide surrounded by mud or as part of a seven-member “family” in a double-wide surrounded by bugs.

In those six houses I mentioned, there are sixteen kids ranging from two to eleven. There are enough subgroups to satisfy them, but even the babies chase the “big kids” around when the occasion calls for it.

Of course, they’ll keep getting older, and with aging comes change. Life will pull them in different directions, friendships from across town will prove more powerful, and boyfriends and girlfriends will put them through what we could never understand.

Later, though, wherever they are and whatever they become, they’ll be thinking back to the front door tappings at 7:00 on a Saturday morning.

They’ll think back to wading – or falling – in the pond behind the Cooks while building traps for frogs and tadpoles.

They’ll reconsider testing the manufacturer’s posted weight limit on the trampoline. What do they know, anyway?

They’ll think back to trading baseball cards, not to improve their collection but to satisfy the itch that only a trade can scratch.

They’ll think back to bicycle and rollerblade races, scarcely fair, and always with a broken rule set forth after, “Go!”

They’ll remember the unfamiliar drivers who stopped and waited, wondering how they made such a wrong turn.

And they’ll miss it.

I, grouchy hermit that I am, will miss it too.

For that, I am most grateful.