Whippoorwill's Singing: What happened to love thy neighbor?

Tuesday night I attended the wakes of two old neighbors, Mrs. Dickerman and Mrs. Polley, both of whom I met in childhood. On this night they lay in adjacent rooms at Irwin Chapel, strangers to each other but not to me. They were a link to my past and the kind of life we all once shared. I sometimes look back on that life and miss the times when most everyone used to know...I mean really know, their neighbor.

Jean Dickerman lived on Warnock in a house directly across the white house I lived in when I was born. Neighborhoods were different in the 60s; everything seemed less complicated and more innocent. It was a time of stay-at-home moms keeping close watch on their kids, a time when people shared their life with the families next door or down the street, a time when neighborhood kids played outside in all kinds of weather and made lasting memories together. I was only five when I left Warnock so many of my memories aren't as clear as my siblings but what I do remember about the neighborhood was the families. There was Mr. and Mrs. Warren at the beginning of the street with sons Phillip, Mark, Timothy, Paul, and daughter Pam. There was my mom's best friend Peggy Hefner just a couple houses down from our own, her husband Clay and their two sons, Bryan and David. There was Mr. and Mrs. Ryan next door to them, their son Buddy, daughters Kathy and little Tina (my first playmate). There was the Simms family across the street with mother Dorothy (widowed or divorced I was never sure) and sons Bruce and Alan (my first boy playmate). There was the Lance family, the Nevels family, the McCullough's, and of course the biggest family of all, the Dickerman's. Jean, the matriarch, lived with her husband Speed and a whole slew of kids (6 sons and 3 daughters). The Warnock neighborhood always felt like a safe place to live. The parents looked out for each other and each others kids. Jean Dickerman was one of those parents and on Tuesday night many of the old gang came to pay their respects. Bruce Simms was there, as was Buddy Ryan, the Lance’s, the Warren's, the McCullough's, just to name a few. It was touching to see so many from the old neighborhood come together to pay tribute to Jean and realize the fondness they felt for her as children will live on.

Pat Polley was another neighbor from another street whom I met when I was five and my family moved to Thorngate. I vividly recall standing in the front yard on moving day watching the commotion of people carrying boxes and furniture inside our new house when Pat walked across the lawn holding a little boy’s hand in hers. She bent down to me and said something like "We live next door and my son Billy is the same age as you." I was shy of course but thrilled to learn that someone my age (even if he was a skinny gawky boy) would be living next door. From that day on Billy and I were pals. We ran with endless energy all summer, swinging in the backyard, finding abandoned bird eggs, trying to keep them warm, climbing trees, playing with frogs, all the things young kids did in those “Leave it to Beaver” days. There weren't as many children on Thorngate as there was on Warnock but there were similarities. It was another place where kids grew up knowing their neighbors. In addition to Billy, there were my aunts, uncles, cousins next door and across the street. There was the Copper family, the Greco's, the Woodson’s, Johnny Nash and his cool leather jacket, the Clark's, the Ritchie's, the Presley's and that playa boy Mark with the big hair (jes’ kiddin honey), the Jones family, the Hansfelder’s, and who could forget ornery old man Frederick. It was a great neighborhood to be a kid.

Seeing Bill Polley and others Tuesday night brought back old childhood memories and it made me think of something on my drive home. I thought of how lucky I was to have grown up when I did in two good neighborhoods surrounded by good people who really knew each other and really cared. That's a rare thing nowadays.