From My Perspective: Losing Our Childhood Heroes

I grew up in a very small town. I was five years old when we moved there in 1975, and the population sign read something just over 1,000 people. That same population sign as you enter that town, now an incorporated city, reads 113,381. It doesn’t really matter what the population is, I still have many of the friends I grew up with who still live there.

What does matter is remembering the way, and the people I grew up with. And let me tell you, thinking back on those memories makes me smile. For the first eight years we lived there, before moving to property where we had livestock, show dogs and an orange grove, we lived in a cul-de-sac of seven houses. I can tell you my address and my phone number from when I lived there, but the other houses were of people’s names, not numbers. There were the McKinney’s, the Wright’s, the May’s, the Scarcellas’, the Whiteis’ and the Slaughters. They all had kids except the Whiteis ' but they had dogs, so even back then they counted as kids.

The McKinney’s owned the local shoe store, where we shopped for back-to-school shoes and shoes for special occasions; their daughters played flute and guitar, and taught me how to play both. They also taught me how to do back-bends and cartwheels.

Mr Wright was a doctor. His daughter Janet was our babysitter on Saturday nights when my parents would go out together.

Mr. Whiteis worked for Southwind Motorhomes, and his wife raised and showed Irish Setters. He and my dad were the best of friends and Kathy and my mom, along with some of the other women, would get together around the kitchen table and drink wine-spritzers while all of the kids played in the back yard.

I babysat for the Mays and helped take care of their kitten. My brother and their son played tee ball and then baseball together.

The Scarcellas’ had a pool, ran the local pizza restaurant and my first kiss was with one of those Scarcella boys at the age of seven or eight.

The Slaughters were probably my favorite neighbors. Mr. Slaughter ran the “junkyard” and was the only tow truck in town. He was on call all the time. Mrs. Slaughter baked the most amazing Christmas cakes and was truly one of the kindest-hearted people I’d ever met, right up until she passed away a couple of years ago. Their oldest son made movies, which starred his brother and me in his version of the Disney movie, Return from Witch Mountain. The youngest son and I played Star Trek and Monopoly for days on end. When my brother was in an accident, it was the Slaughters I stayed with while my parents stayed at the hospital.

We had streetlights that came on when it got dark, and went off when the sun came up.

All of us kids would use the cul-de-sac as our own skating rink, and we’d play baseball as a group and with other kids from up and down the street. Our childhood was fairly innocent. We were walking distance to a lake, helped each other with homework and went to the community pool to swim, except when we were allowed to swim at the Scarcellas.

I didn’t know it then, but all of those adults and all of those kids from those seven houses were a family. While Facebook has its flaws and drawbacks, one of the greatest things to come out of it for me is being able to keep in touch with almost all those individuals, and sometimes read updates that completely knock me down.

On Sunday I received word that Mr. Slaughter passed away. He was 88 and, like other people in my life, someone I just thought would live forever, not that anyone ever does. His oldest son always posted photos of the family out together, eating at restaurants, gathering for holidays, family trips, and so on. I know he’ll continue to post family photos, but it will be minus one very special person.

Losing this childhood hero now brings back so many memories of the roles they played in my life as a child. They didn’t know they were our heroes, or even the people we looked up to, but we did. And as they leave us, the memories flood back and I wish I could be a kid again.