March 18, 2015 / 0 comments

WHAT HAPPENED TO MY SESAME STREET?

What ever happened to Sesame Street?  Who are the people in your neighborhood?
In your neighborhood?  In your
neighborhood?  Say, who are the people in your neighborhood?  They’re the people that you meet, when you are walking down the street, they’re the people that you meet each day!!

This song clearly illuminates a sign of the times for me.  I guess I am really getting older.  When we were growing up, the street we lived on was SAFE.  What use to be a safe haven for children to grow and play, has become a community of danger and strangers, who stay to themselves and have no desire to interact with anyone. 

 On Sesame Street, they sang and walked down the street meeting a policman, the mailman, and the fireman.  At the age of forty-eight, I can still count eleven houses and name every family that lived on my block without hesitation.  Even as a child, we somehow knew what each adult did. A few Mill workers, a school teacher, policeman, homemaker, nurse, postal worker, and an engineer lived on my block.  Not only did I know them, but  all of them knew my name.  


 “Neighborhood Watch,” was a verb not a noun.  They were words to live by not a scheduled shift.  As a matter of fact, everybody on my block knew when a strange car or person was on our street and watched them.   Everbody owned and cared for their home and yard.  

Times have changed.  When we were going out of town, my mother would say, “Tell Mrs. Gloria that we will be out of town for five days.”  Now the question is, “Do you think they might rob us blind when we are gone?”  

We played outside with all the neighborhood children.  Nobody played indoors unless the weather was inclimate.  We would play from dawn till dusk.  The children nowadays don’t play outside and don’t really know each other.  By the time school started, we were well acquainted with everyone who walked to school from our neighborhood.  

I really miss Sesame Street and I miss my old neighborhood and street. Every now and then, I have a desire to go back to the old neighborhood and knock on doors, but times have truly changed.  I guess I will have to just settle with the great memories of my childhood neighborhood. 

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