My family lived in the Little Brook Apartments for I believe the entirety of my third grade year. I have many memories from that time. I told many of those stories in a blog post a while back. I wanted to add a bit since I am reminiscing.
At Little Brook Apartments I went to my first, & maybe my last, "bible study classes." Our apartment was on the first floor, but I remember going upstairs to someone's apartment, lured by the promise of juice & cookies. There were several of us of many different ages - I would've been 9, but there were teenage girls there. The probably seventeen- or eighteen-year-old leading the study talked about the battle of Jericho. I hadn't heard that story before - it was closer to a Greek myth, which I loved, than other bible stuff I'd been exposed to. Afterwards, being completely creepy, he told us he was planning an "orgy." Most of us had heard the word & felt it had naughty connotations, but he assured us, it just meant "party." I don't know if he ever had his orgy, just that I never went back to his bible study.
My sister Karin had become involved at a nearby Baptist Church & one day dragged us with her, so I had a more normal bible study with kids my age while the regular services were going on. There was juice & cookies, thank goodness, but we talked about Noah instead. I knew that story. Ho-hum. My sister left that church at some point because, she said, the pastor propositioned her. She would've been fifteen or sixteen at the time.
In the blog post that I linked above (which I have linked again), I mentioned that behind the apartment's back wall was basically an overgrown lot which had dirt bike trails; today that area is developed, & the apartment butts up against backyards of homes now. We had found a rotting home back there in which to play, but my mother forbade us to go there ever again, & her control over us was such we never did. Another thing we discovered was that we could climb down into the rain sewers. (If that's what they were called.) We were little then, & it was amazing to crawl through dark pipes & then peep up - like raccoons! - to busy streets. There was one entrance, in the apartment's parking lot, which was big enough for us to shimmy down. I remember how fun that day was. Of course my mother told me I could never go down there again. & I never did.
It was there that I met someone who was one of the first people who seemed to like me for me. His name was Glen Davis. (It was something of a joke between us that people sometimes called me Glen, & for some reason him Gary. Our names were not as common then I suppose - though I suspect they're less common now - well, Gary, at least.) Glen was athletic & adorable, the opposite of me, & his friendship in third grade made the nascent "jocks" - who even then could barely tolerate me - acknowledge my presence. In PE, Glen (a born team captain) would pick me for his side over other players who, frankly, were better at the sports than I was. His older sister became friends with my sister Karin. I remember they moved out of the apartments before we did - we visited them once in another apartment complex down the street, & Glen, my little brother Chris, & I were bouncing on his bed, when a bedspring burst through - & into my foot. I bled a lot. I cried a lot more. It wasn't that bad, ultimately.
It may have been at Glen's apartment - though I suspect it was at someone else's - that I had one of the most difficult problems of my young age. I had eaten something that gave me food poisoning. I had found myself with both diarrhea & with the urge to vomit simultaneously. I made it to a bathroom but had to figure out, with the sluice open at both ends at it were, how to deal with it. Suspecting it would be worse to clean up excrement than vomit, I sat on the toilet & hurked all over my legs. Luckily I was very, very sick, so I was sent home, & no big deal was made of the mess I made. I am sad to say I've had to make that decision more than once in my life since then.
Ultimately I think I was happy there. I mentioned in the earlier blog (shall I link it again?) that I loved being woken by the train in the mornings. My mother finally let us walk to school alone - we lived just a few blocks away. I was doing well in school & had a moderate number of acquaintances who liked to play superheroes from the comics I read over & over. In my mind's eye I can even walk around the little apartment in which we lived - it wasn't very big, but I suspect I found it comforting in a way I hadn't in any other place I lived. Maybe I was in the process of growing into me.
My mother seemed to blame me & my little brother for tensions with the manager of the complex - she lived across the little breezeway from us & did not like us hanging out around her back patio - & we had to leave in the summer of 1977 I believe. Like the other times we left an apartment, it happened fast - I of course was not consulted. The next place we lived was farther away*, & I lost touch with the many people I knew around there. Which is natural. But I do have a fondness for the Little Brook Apartments I hadn't realized until I began writing this tonight.
It's fascinating that, of all the apartments I lived in during my childhood & adolescence, the Little Brook Apartments have never changed its name. It can't be because the brand is so great. Maybe it never felt the need. They have stood for at least forty-four years, & probably more - they certainly weren't new when we moved in.
*Just to give you a sense of how close the apartments in which I lived from the ages of let's say four to ten, here they are on a map:
Click to enlarge. On the top left is "Kingsley Crossing" - it was called Kingsley Manor when I lived there. On the top right is "Spanish Stone," which was called "Lockwood Arms" when I lived there. & at the bottom left - just south of "Kingsley Crossing," is Little Brook. An easy walk to any of them. By the way, the public storage space to the east of "Kingsley Crossing" used to be a giant empty lot full of pecan trees - & a great place to play when I lived at Little Brook.
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