Downey Street

For us kids, my five brothers and I, Downey Street was basically our world, giving us friends, comraderie, fun and sometimes adventure. It was a small one way street- flat at the bottom and rising up to a hill at the top, and like a hole in the wall it was barely perceptible to those whom either did not know where it was or did not live there. But it was our street and our home and as we thought at the time, our place. The majority of the families that lived there on Downey street were like our family, regular working class folks that owned the homes they lived in and had alot of children as was the norm in those days. There were many Black families that lived there and some of the names they had were very colorful, such as Junebug and Ivory, Moline and Mama LeBeaux, Edward Charles and Winky. Most of our relationships as we were coming up came from being around the Black folks we lived with as neighbors and friends during those times. I can still hear the sounds of the kids playing out in the street or even see them sitting all together talking on someone's front stairs. Still now I can smell the aroma of soul food cooking from the houses and can taste Mrs. Tookas' mini pies that she baked every week to sell for her church. Our next door neighbor MaryLou used to chew tobacco and spit it out as she watered the collard greens that she grew in her backyard, and Mr. Jack used to limp around like Grampa McCoy because one of his legs was shorter than the other. Mr. Jack even made it into the newspaper one time when he stopped a robbery at Walter Wong's Market. Across the street at dinner time you could hear Mrs. Robinson calling her kids to come eat- Mary Ann! Linda Marie! Robin Elaine! Sheila Ann! Edward Charles! Velma Lee! And at dinner time there would be no one outside at all because it was the same all up and down the street, and we all had to be there inside the house for dinner. But that's not all, there was much much more to see and feel and be. That was Downey street in the 60's, a place where we are from and always be...