Our house stood at the top of the hill on Fairview Avenue in Greenville, South Carolina, near Augusta Road. There was the sensible way to travel that hill, going slowly, and there was the way I preferred… on my three-wheeler: coming down as fast as I could and hitting the brake just before the sidewalk dropped toward the road.
I remember the speed better than I remember my age.
Some parts of childhood come back more clearly through photographs than through anything I can remember on my own. I know the picture. Whether I remember the moment somebody took it is harder to say. Looking at photographs of the backyard now, I keep finding places where something else used to be.
To get back there, I walked through the covered driveway beside the house. A few steps led up to a little landing and a door we almost never used. I thought of it as a place where people could get out of old buggies or whatever had come through before us. Mom kept a little saint statue there. She still does.
Past the door was the scary stairwell down to the basement. It was open and overgrown, and animals got down there. At the bottom was the way into that scarier hallway beneath the house. The idea of going down those steps and through that hallway terrified me.
Mom eventually had it covered because water was getting into the house there. I have always been glad she did.
Farther back, there is a brick island in the driveway now. I don’t know what else to call it: a broad rectangle of brick with concrete around it. That was where the fort stood.
First I remember bare ground. Then a sandbox. Then the fort, with the sandbox gone. Looking at the bricks brings back those different versions of the same spot, and then another picture comes into my head: the fort much later at the lake house, old and warped, with a forest growing around it.
The open pad near the garage brings back winter.
Almost every time it got cold enough, Gregg would get the hose and start making ice. He seemed to know the exact temperature when it would work. I never understood how the hose could still have water coming out of it instead of being frozen. I thought he might have fixed something or done something to make it work. Whatever he did, he could get it going.
He carefully sprayed the driveway over and over, building up the ice until it was thick. He let me do some of it, but I made a mess. I got water on my hands and ended up cold and wet. Gregg did most of the icing.
The water went all the way down the driveway toward the street, where the hill became really steep. We stayed where we could slide safely. The ice made a mirror you could see yourself in. Then we went over it enough times that it began to crack.
We wore tennis shoes. I think of it as skating sometimes, but it wasn’t skating. We were sliding on our feet, back and forth, over and over again.
It was so much fun.
Gregg seems more like a kid in that memory than he does in most of the other ones I have of him. He was my older brother, the one who knew how to make the ice, and then he was out there sliding with me. We kept doing it because we wanted to do it again.
Behind the garage was a pathway I used for hide-and-seek. I spent a lot of time back there. Sometimes I went there by myself just to pretend I was in a secret world. Coming out of it, I could look onto the yard where we played.
When I was very little, that yard was mostly open, with only a few plants. Mom kept adding things. Eventually there was a whole garden, and we knew that side wasn’t ours to play in anymore.
She had a fence built with an archway. The archway stayed open, which I always thought was a little funny. We could walk straight through it. Everyone understood that we weren’t supposed to.
The dogs never understood. Mom didn’t want them pooping in her garden, and they kept going through the opening and doing exactly that. It was the bane of her existence for a while.
I remember a field of flowers with a pathway winding through it. When I did go back there, I was careful where I put my feet. Mom wouldn’t yell at me, but I knew she would be unhappy if I crushed her plants. Sometimes I got blamed for plants I thought the dogs had stepped on. I don’t remember doing it. Mom said I did.
Her garden is still lush now. It is beautiful in spring, but there aren’t as many of the colorful annuals she used to put in. She is older, and she has made it easier to maintain. The fountain she added against the brick wall used to trickle water. She has turned it on occasionally in nicer weather, but I’m not sure it works anymore.
There were trees I could climb. A big fig tree stood in a corner where I could get up onto the wall. I remember being brave enough to stand and walk back and forth along the top.
From up there I could see past the neighbor’s house into Kelly Rook’s yard and look to see whether she was playing. I could see the trees around Miller Harper’s house, though I couldn’t see the house itself. I looked anyway, just in case I could tell whether he was there.
Another tree grew right at the corner of our house, between our part of the yard and Mom’s. I wanted to climb from it onto the roof. The angle of the roof scared me, and I never made that move.
I liked being high, up to a point. Looking down from the wall, and especially from the tree, I sometimes felt like a bird. The house was below me. Places I knew from the ground looked different. I didn’t want to go too, too high, but I loved being where I was.
A pathway behind the house led to a gate into the Funderburks’ property. Their house was enormous to me, old and a deep salmon color. It is lighter now. Above it was a cupola, though I had no word for that then.
I thought of it as the lighthouse.
I would look up and imagine that somebody must be in there looking out. Or that somebody must have stood there once, looking out of that window. For some reason, that frightened me.
Gregg was over there constantly, doing work for Miss Funderburk. He spent time across the street with Kitty and Bill Woodson too. They seemed ancient to me. He knew these people and went into their houses.
I went through the gate looking for him. There were two garages with a room built in that I never knew them to use. I thought there were ghosts in there. Miss Funderburk had a dog that scared me, possibly two: a little yappy one and a bigger one. She was very nice, but she frightened me a little too. They smoked inside the house. I didn’t like going in.
I wish I could picture Gregg over there better. I can see him bent over, working on something in the garden. I remember helping him trim bushes once.
I also remember going up to the back porch, knowing he was inside, and trying to get brave enough to follow him. I don’t remember whether I did. I think I called out to him.
Other times I stayed on our side of the fence and looked over. There was the big salmon house, and above it the window where I imagined somebody looking out.
I wondered if Gregg was over there.
I wanted to find him.
Keep exploring: The Two Books, another childhood fragment with Gregg, or visit the Fragments Explorer.
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