This morning, I got a nice little Facebook memory on my friends and family account. This photo, which I estimate to have been taken when I was about 14 or 15, shows me (back corner right) with just a few of my neighborhood buddies (and a couple of young'uns), standing in front of the McBride home, on Micott Drive in Hampton, Virginia. Our neighborhood, "Granger Court East," was built in the early 60's as an extension of the historic Aberdeen Gardens neighborhood. Granger Court was marketed to attract black military families - retired or active duty - to its middle class arrangement of a variety of 3 and 4 bedroom single family homes.
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| Part of the "GCG" sometime in the early 70s. (Rest in peace, Shirelle and Karen.) To say that Granger Court was filled with kids would be an understatement! Every household had children; and we spanned all the age groups. We were an all-black neighborhood, with working parents (always dad - and probably about 75% mom, too) and plenty of room to run, play, and explore. We didn't have any type of recreation services - not even a playground. We made our own fun playing kickball/baseball/football/dodgeball in the cul-de-sacs, hanging out and playing in the woods and at the "Big Hills,"* climbing/scooting/balancing over fallen trees and sewer pipes in the woods - to get to an adjacent neighborhood, riding bikes, playing hide-and-seek, swinging on clotheslines - and just doing whatever else we could do (or get into) that would keep us outside with our friends -- but only until the streetlights came on! (Of course, that rule loosened when we became teenagers. We hung on the neighborhood corners well into the night, then!)
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Somewhere along the way, a group of us started referring to ourselves as the GCG, or "Granger Court Gang," for short. I know that I was the one who came up with this, and it only caught on with a small group of my friends, but I remember thinking it would be cool to refer to ourselves in this way, especially when we ventured as a group into other neighborhoods, such as "L.A." (Lower Aberdeen) or "P.C." (Pine Chapel). And, every time I see this "tough" looking photo of some of us, I feel as though it personifies that moniker quite perfectly - quite probably being one of the only times a group of kids from Granger Court ever looked the part of a "gang."
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| Somewhere, I have a photo that shows our whole house; but, for now, here are my siblings and me standing in front of the house, sometime in the 60s. |
Thanks for reading! Renate
* The "Big Hills" were two HUGE mountains of dirt that we could climb, ride our bikes down, or slide down on pieces of cardboard. They were located behind the Darby's and the McBride's homes, off of Micott Drive, right next to one of our entryways to the The Woods and The Creek. :) We didn't know it, then, but I now realize that those "mountains" were the mounds of dirt that had created when the land was cleared to make our beloved neighborhood. Later, the Big Hills were removed, and more houses were built on the land on which they used to stand.
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From the time I was 8 until I was 12, we lived on Calvert in Detroit. And it was something like the neighborhood you mention - lots of kids, playing in vacant lots etc. We lived in an upstairs flat and when my mother bought a house and we moved, the new neighborhood was not the same. Maybe because by then I was in junior high school. Anyway, I enjoyed reading about your years in Granger Court.
ReplyDeleteThank you for commenting, Kristin! I was definitely fortunate to have had this experience, but YOU were so blessed with FAMILY, so you had it great!
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