4550 North Harris Hill Road

The Poplars in May, 1967.

    They are gone now and have been for many years, the tall thin green soldiers that grew to touch the clouds. I miss them deeply and I wonder if the ground from which they sprouted is itself fated to follow.

   North Harris Hill Road was originally developed sometime between the late twenties and early forties in what was at the time a very rural hamlet just outside Williamsville, New York. Surviving from the late forties into the mid sixties were the tall sublime poplar trees. They stood as majestic guardians, about a dozen or so on either side of my childhood home. I remember lying on the small hill in my backyard watching the poplars sway in unison with the summer breeze. They, as my pure freedom, did not survive much longer, disease and a natural short life span killed them. I look back at them with even more fondness, knowing that they, amongst so many other short-lived aspects of Harris Hill Road, educated me on the fleeting whimsy I was to face for the rest of my life.

   The massive A-framed house my grandfather and his father built in 1947 was hidden from the road by four massive pine trees. An expanse of grass sprawled out in front of those four giants interrupted by a single even larger willow tree near the edge of the road. Such was the character of that vision that meshed so well with my own growing character, secluded and introverted; looming large behind an imposing self made sanctuary, safe and secure. I loved that house and hated leaving it years later. It was if one life ended and a new, unwanted life began. It was my womb outside the womb that allowed me to experience the world on my own terms and at my own beckoning.

   It was in this year, as the second grade was about to end, I remember being in the school nurse's office...my home away from home. For two years running, since school began for me, I found myself "ill" and needing to leave the classroom and find seclusion yet again behind the thin cloth curtains of a cinder-block enclosed chamber, one of three cubicles inside that office. I lay on the cot, its thin paper cover crinkling under me, smelling the cot's light green vinyl. The thin thermometer nestled gingerly under my tongue. I stared upward, counting the holes in the ceiling tile and listened closely as the nurse spoke routinely and with an air of cynical sarcasm to my mother on the telephone. I laid there in suspense, needing to hear the word that my mother would soon be there to rescue me and bring me back to where I belong, behind the four large pine trees, safe and secure. I needed to explore the world again, but only from there, and on my own.

   In the backyard of that house clad in grey concrete stucco was another massive willow tree. It sat right next to the separate twin garage, a building almost as massive as the adjacent house; a long concrete driveway ran in front of that "second house" with its "mother-in-law" quarters rising above the two separate garages it contained. The apartment above had long since been abandoned when my great grandfather died and his wife moved to Florida. I never knew them but I knew their son well, my father’s father, “Grandpa Tony”.

   Grandpa would spend most of the spring and early summer weekends waking us up early on a Saturday morning armed with small knives and baskets to pick asparagus. The stalks were hidden in the thick tall blades of grass, three acres of which sat behind that massive back yard willow. It was much like an enduring Easter egg hunt, finding the right sized stalks, not too small and definitively not too large, filling our baskets on a cool spring day. It was in those fields that I found comfort and spirit. My mind wandered yet always seemed to find a path in those fields. It was as if I was being guided by something greater, an old soul that took my hand and guided me through those tall blades of grass, finding aspects of life hidden like the perfect stalk of asparagus ready for me to harvest.

   It was in those fields later that summer that I discovered "Sam", a wandering dog who for two weeks straight guided me toward paths of discovery ranging from salamanders to dead ground hog skeletons in holes. Not knowing his real name or to whom he belonged, I named him Sam not because he reminded me of my aunts' and uncles' dog, "Sammy" in Rochester...it was just a name that came to mind. At once he was gone after two weeks, but he taught me how to explore and that is what I did, on my own.

   Time is slow for all children. The term “endless summer” belongs only to the young. Yet, even as long as the summer of 1967 seemed and still seems, for me it was a lifetime. As I wandered those fields I sensed, even as a seven-year-old, the past. It was as if I had lived in this hamlet forever. I remember the house, two houses away from mine, just beyond the stance of poplars, white, slant boarded siding and fancy ornaments on its corners by the roof. It had two rows of grape vines in its deep back yard and it was fun to hide within them. Yet I sensed the history back then and I felt the meaning in its existence. It was just understood by me that all of this, from the fields to the beautiful forty-year-old houses and the mighty poplars, came well before me. It taught me humility. It tempered my childish assumptions that the world revolved around me.

  That neighborhood was not just a bedroom community; a place to “stay” while one ekes out an existence. It was existence. It was where lives were lived. My antenna was razor sharp and adeptly attuned to spirits that flowed amongst the grape vines and tall grass, the willows and the pines and most definitely in the slim sentinels, the poplars that pointed to the heavens. I felt connected to the channels of energy, seemingly hundreds, thousands of spirits, waiting patiently in turn to guide me on a journey. Going to school ripped me apart from that spirit. I felt lost, disconnected, in deep, deep trouble.

   A year earlier, in first grade, I remember being in deep sadness as my class was guided through the sterile hallways and into the school library. I remember feeling desperately alone, a lost soul, and as a child, terrified as well. I then saw the books on the shelves and, as the librarian explained how the library works for the first time to first graders, I disconnected from her and the rest of the class and studied spines of each shelved book. “There are spirits here” I intuited to myself. I felt better, suddenly. The library would become my oasis in the desert of forced friendships and rigid training on how to be a proper, productive citizen. I knew even then that my days of running to the nurse’s office with an imaginary illness would indeed not last. I desperately needed to find a lifeline and a place to nestle in this baron wilderness of social training. To this day, the smell of a library reminds me of that first visit. I truly was not alone. Still, though I found that respite, my energy would continue to thrive at its fullest amongst the timeless energies that existed on North Harris Hill Road.

   As the poplars swayed in the breeze I explored my secluded world everyday, alone and happy. The only exception to my solitude was my sister Tina. Martina was eleven months younger than I.  We were best friends. That summer we took off on a “rock band tour”, visiting our neighbors and serenading them, me on the two large cooking pots, using a fork and a spoon as drumsticks and her singing “Monkees” and “Beatle’s” songs. I remember her singing, knowing all the words even at six years old;

"...how old did you say your sister was?”

and me on the chorus;

“sister was...sister was..."

I played for my “girlfriend”, the teenage babysitter three houses away, on her front porch as my six year old sister goaded me by saying, “Play for her Sonny, you love her”. Though Tina seemed to me to share many of the intuitions of that environment, she was a social butterfly and more readily allowed herself to break free of our neighborhood womb sharing her spirit with others as they shared themselves with her. I never really envied it, in fact, it was because we were so close, I was able to glean much of the outside world through her. As her older brother, I used her in effect as a vassal, keeping me informed; staying in touch with happened beyond our home. She often came back to me with exciting stories of adventures with new friends. I was happy enough to educate myself with her explorations and never felt the desire to discover on my own. I was content and complete. The spirits and energies I somehow discovered living within that enclave gave me volumes of knowledge and truly taught me all I needed to know. To this day, forty-five years later, I feel its draw and know it exists.

   To this day, I could find all I needed, right there. It amazes me that even as we have virtually destroyed our past, “paved over paradise”, every small town looking the same, Wal-Mart’s, Applebee’s, et el…North Harris Hill Road desperately holds onto its past. The shallow sentimental, two dimensional whims of grown-up children, doctors and lawyers, very wealthy businessmen and women now lay claim to these “charming” sixty and seventy-year-old houses, at least until they grow bored, seek another path in their desperate journey to find life’s true meaning, rezone the neighborhood and make a killing selling off to the next “Superstore” which will “employ thousands”. Desperately, North Harris Hill clings to life, itself now an oasis in the growing desert. The neighborhood itself is now as I was a first grader, ripped away from its own world, having to find a way to live amongst a world that lacks character, that lacks imagination and that lacks energy and spirit. Somehow though it still survives and I still feel the spirits, thousands of miles and years gone by.

The poplars are long gone but somehow, their sublime spirit remains.

   I take comfort in that.