Gothard Rd. Part 2

The one thing that stands out to me about the time we spent on Gothard Rd. is the amount of freedom us kids were given.  Not only were we running about on the Cul-de-sac for nightly games of Kick the Can, we were running all over the neighborhood.

Back then we was usually myself and Cheryl, who had moved in across the street sometime after my family had arrived.  Cheryl and her family had come from Michigan after her father accepted a job with another favorite team, the Baltimore Colts.  We were the same age so it made sense that we hung out together.

We covered a lot of ground in those days.  There was a 7-11 about a mile away.  It became an almost daily ritual to head over that way for candy cigarettes, wax lips and some strange candy that was made to look like lipstick.  Yeah, us kids were not only running free through the neighborhood, we were also stuffing as much sugar as possible into our mouths while we did it.

We spent most of our time outside.  There was no air conditioning inside and the black and white TV that sat in the corner of our living room only played 4 or 5 stations.  The outside offered a whole lot more fun than anything going on inside the house.  When Hurricane Agnes arrived in June of 1972 we were not deterred; we put on bathing suits and headed out the front door to play in the storm. 

The Bookmobile drove through the neighborhood each week, so did the fruit and vegetable truck.  The older man who owned the green panel van always had purple grapes to hand out to kids.  The Charlie Chip man came through on a regular basis delivering chips and pretzels to the neighbors.  We weren't one of the lucky ones getting a delivery from the chip guy but I sure wished we could be.

There were three good years on Gothard Rd., and then before I knew it we were moving north to someplace called Bel Air.   I didn't know much about Bel Air, except that it was located in Harford County, and that county was always getting snow days.