O A K F I E L D ,   N E W   Y O R K

I was probably 10 years old and I thought it was a school day. So I got myself up, dressed, ate breakfast, then headed out to the bus stop one street down from Gibson Street. After I got there I just waited, and waited, and waited. The bus was just late I thought. But it seemed strange that I was the only kid there, where was everybody else? After more waiting, I noticed the family car had pulled near the bus stop and my folks were motioning to me. Come to find out, it was Sunday, not Monday, and they were all heading off to church.

Near my old church I spy the village cemetery. It's a pretty big cemetery, probably dating back to the 1800s. I used to play at the "unoccupied" end of the cemetery but people continue to die, and their subsequent burials has slowly swallowing up my old playing digs. I remember playing football here with the neighbor kids as well as flying kites in the spring.

One spring I bought a huge, red kite and made plans to tether it with not one but two balls of string. On a really windy day I decided to fly my new kite. Reeling out the first ball's worth of string was a smashing success, the kite was really high in the sky. But I was stupid about how I tied the end string of the first ball with the start string of the second ball. I tied the start string to the end string but not vise versa. Needless to say, as the second ball of string started to feed from my hand I had the displeasure of watching my kite break free then quickly ascent to monumental heights as it quickly soared up and out of sight.

Across the street from the cemetery is the Oakfield Fire Station and the adjacent baseball diamond where the Softball Fire Station Leagues play. We lived pretty close to the fire station. At 6pm every evening the siren would sound off. All other times it was an actual call. It was pretty loud, enough to wake me from a sound sleep.

I backtrack and ride down to the bottom of Maple Avenue. This is the street my friends and I would skid our bikes down for distance. I talk about this activity in more detail in my Biking Bio.