THE LURE OF THE BACKLOTS

Several Years Ago
I became aware of how imprinted the sights and scenes of my childhood are in my memory. I could go back there in my mind and roam  even when I was miles away in Ohio. I often dream of being lost and then realizing it was Pawtucket and cheerfully finding my way home. 

Years ago I did some research on the subject and found that there is an entire field of work and writing under the heading :CHILDHOOD GEOGRAPHY. I made the connection with my own experience and made a map of  my childhood haunts. On one of my trips back home to see my mother, I actually drove around and tried to photograph them or what was left of them,

I delivered a talk at the Slater Mill under the heading At WORK AND PLAY IN The FIELDS OF PAWTUCKET. It was a fun occasion.--so many friends and relatives  and old neighbors showed up that night. I later gave at an American Culture Conference a more academic version of the talk which cited the experts in Geography and  Child Psychology.  It seems that before everyone owned a car, children did roam far outside their areas, but in each generation that radius of childhood exploration and discovery has shrunk until now it is difficult to get children to leave the house. When they do leave, it is to walk a few feet to a car and get driven to appointments "play dates" etc.

Recently I drove by to look at the BACK LOTS. You can drive into the lots off Columbus Avenue.  It is now a trailer park with roads winding  through. In my childhood days it was a grassy retreat and seemed special.  I reached it by walking through somebody's yard; it ran behind  all the houses on Rhode Island Ave.

Why am I thinking of the Back Lots today. Because today--a warm day in May carrying on  breezes the fragrance of the blooming lilacs-- is a perfect day to go to the Lots.  As soon as I arrived there I would decide whether the grass had been cut back on the steep hills that  ran down from RI AVE to the lots to allow me to lay down and roll sideways down the hill. If it was a good day and I decided to roll, I would do it over and over until I was dizzy with the joy of it.

If  I came with any, neighborhood friends, I would see if they would roll and I would stop when they wanted to stop. I NEVER WANTED TO STOP!

There was another excitement in the lots.  If  we walked back away from Columbus, we came to a rise  and a series of  concrete broken walls.  I was told that there  had once been a reservoir there.  Now I see that the whole of the lots was actually a  dried  up river bed. Water had once flowed from the Pond that was drained to make MC COY to  Dunnells Pond and must have passed on to  flow into the Blackstone --called the Pawtucket River at that point.  But I had made up another narrative.  I said that it had been an Indian encampment and that it had been torn down.  But if we looked we might find Indian arrowheads.  So we would search and did dig and some would find  rocks with pointed  arrow shapes and we would decide that they had been  parts of arrowheads or stones used to make arrowheads.  Were we on to something??  Who knows.
I made up the story --they looked-- and some found something. 

Do not discount all my narratives--even from where I am sitting to write this  I can see an old map of Pawtucket  from the 1890s framed on my wall. And  it shows water at the base of Pond Street--they did not call it Pond Street for nothing, AND another street called Lakeview runs off Columbus--still does.  I just drove by there ten minutes ago.