The Fourth of July is tomorrow.
As long as I can remember, my hometown of Bowie, Maryland, had a fireworks display. I remember way back when they used to have the fireworks at the Bowie Race Track.
While I am on the topic of the Race Track... several years ago, I was attending the funeral of a good friend's father. The deceased was a long time football coach in the Bowie Boys Club. The family had several articles posted at the funeral home about teams their dad had coached. As I read one of the articles, I was a bit shocked to read a recounting of a game between the Bowie 125 pound football team and the jockeys from the Race Track.
I though to myself: These were grown men... albeit small grown men.... playing against young boys. This had to be a recipe for disaster. What parent would have allowed their young son to compete in a game against a bunch of men?
As I read the article, I was shocked to see that the quarterback for the Bowie squad was none other than Joe Palumbo, my oldest brother! When I asked him about the game, he recalled that the first half was not so bad... but the jockeys came back after halftime a little bit drunk.
I am guessing they got a little vodka with their orange slices!
As the years passed and the Race Track closed, the fireworks display was moved to Allen Pond.
People flocked there, but I never did. My dad always bought fireworks for our back yard.
Then when I got old enough and wanted to see the Bowie fireworks, I would always try to find someplace high enough to see the display, but far enough away that I did not have to actually drive into... or out of... that mess. Some of the best locations like my local elementary school or the Home Depot parking lot, became just as crowded as the Allen Pond lots.
The pyrotechnics display had been a regular part of the Independence Day celebration in Bowie for year and years... until this year.
Sadly, the city is not having fireworks this year.
Apparently, a few years ago, the whole event got switched to the local Minor League Baseball Team's stadium. In the worst planning ever, the Baysox have a home game on the 4th and the stadium is not available to the city. This seems a bit silly because the Baysox have fireworks all the time and had a display on July 4th for years. In fact, the Home Depot parking lot was primo because you could catch both the baseball team display and the city's Allen Pond display.
This was one of the reasons that I became reluctant to return to the Home Depot lot... because it was getting too crowded. It gave me the perfect opportunity to use one of my favorite Yogi Berra sayings: Nobody goes there anymore because it is too crowded!
I was saddened by this news, and it started me thinking about growing up in Bowie.
What a great place to grow up! A simpler time, for sure.
If you are not from Bowie, it is a Levittown community with about four or five different types of houses. It is divided up into several different sections: the Kenilworth Section, the Foxhill Section, the Meadowbrook Section, the Somerset Section, the Buckingham Section, and so on.
Of course, these sections all shortened to the K section, the F section, The M section , The S section, the B section. You get the idea. Oh... and every section had its own elementary school, so you were sure to know all the kids in your section.
Every street in the K Section began with the letter K and so on. This ensured complete confusion if you ever got lost. Every street sounded just like the others until you somehow managed to weave your way out of the Kenilworth labyrinth and into a different section.
We protected our sections like gangs protecting their turf. So if you ever did manage to cross into the wrong section, you could get knifed.
Not really.
I mean, nobody got knifed... but we did sometimes play the kids from the L section in Nerf basketball... and that could get pretty heated at times!
The L section was pretty cool because you could go through the L section, over the railroad tracks and up a hill to the greatest store in the history of Bowie: J-Mart. I don't remember what all they sold at J-Mart... except candy and gum and ice cream. What else did a kid need?
J-Mart was not the only great shopping experience in Bowie.
We also had the Belair Shopping Center, which subsequently became the Market Place. I know that the Belair Shopping Center had stores and such, but what I remember most was the Turtle. Not the Greene Turtle Restaurant... but an actual cement Turtle that was located in a concrete courtyard surrounded by a low stone fence. If you were not running along the stone fence, you were climbing on that Turtle.
This spot was so great that Santa chose it as his Bowie winter workshop... not to be confused with the creepy big Easter Bunny that later set up shop outside of the Arlans in the new mall (the one that was built on Boswell Field) complete with the coolest water fountain ever... with changing colored lights and everything! That water fountain was as modern as it got in Bowie... but the Bunny was creepy!
Not as creepy as the Goat Man... But that is an urban legend for another day.
I remember that we rode our bikes or walked wherever we would go. We played ball (whatever ball was in season), we went to the local pool or park, and we went to friends' homes. If you couldn't ride your bike or walk there, you simply would not go.
Some days we would be gone for hours at a time... without a cell phone.
I know... you all just gasped at the thought of that!
And we all survived!!!
In fact, we all survived with only one phone in the house and no call-waiting. I find it fascinating that my kids don't even know what a busy signal is.
The Bowie Boy's Club was the best. You played with kids from all over Bowie and the level of talent was pretty remarkable. Hundreds of kids would try out for the best teams, and it was an honor to make the "A" team. There were plenty of kids for B teams and intramural leagues. Hundreds of kids participating and the best kids made the best teams and only winners got trophies. If you hit a home run, you got a burger at the local Hardee's or a free Slurpee.
During football season, if you were ever lucky enough to have the Friday night or Saturday night game at Whitemarsh, you had the privilege and the opportunity to shine in front of the biggest crowds. I still recall one Saturday night when some 10-year-old kid threw for more than three-hundred yards and five touchdowns in one game. I am sure it is something that he will remember for the rest of his life.
Kid was a stud. Handsome little guy. Rumor has it that he grew up to be a funny guy.
In our family, no matter where we were during the day, we'd better have made it home for dinner. My dad had the perfect system. He had this unmistakeable whistle.
Every night at dinner time, he would whistle for us to come home. Often this was right in the middle of a game of Hill Dill, Kick the Can, or Get Tough (I think this game was unique to our street... one guy had the ball and everyone else tackled him and the runner had to "GET TOUGH"). Every once in a while, as we would scurry on home, a new kid would suggest that we just claim that we did not hear the whistle and continue playing.
Someone would always explain to him that this strategy was not an option. If we couldn't hear the whistle, we were too far from the house at dinner time! That would make my dad very upset. We couldn't personally stay to explain it all to the kid because we were too busy getting our rear ends home!
Once the new guys got to know my dad, they understood.
It just occurred to me that my dad's whistle may have been the equivalent of a group text message!
Bowie was a great place to grow up.
I was the youngest of six kids and was at the tail end of much of the great stuff. For instance, I never played on Boswell Field and was probably only five- or six-years-old when we were at the peak of playing Get Tough. I doubt they were jamming me up whenever I had the ball... on second thought, they probably did. After all, I had to GET TOUGH!
I find it sad that this type of childhood seems to be disappearing.
Kids don't leave the house in the morning only to return home in time for dinner. The good athletes play on "select" or "travel" teams with kids from different cities and sometimes different states. There are no J-Marts to walk to, and Heaven forbid that parents let their kids cross the railroad tracks.
You never see a bunch of drunk jockeys playing football against a bunch of young kids... okay, I will concede that not all of it was a good idea.
But the worst thing of all... you never see kids just climbing on a turtle while their parents shop.
Things just seemed to be less complicated when I was a kid. I suppose, you could say that growing up back in the day is analogous to the turtle...
The perfection was in the simplicity!
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