day 304: memories of bradley forest road

Kazzy

day 304: memories of bradley forest road

They would drive past our house in their family car, which happened to be a hearse, and they would wave.  All of the little girls leaning out the windows with smiles on their faces, arms flapping, not knowing there had been many dead bodies lying in the back of that car in the past.

After a rainstorm, of which there are many in Virginia, the little frogs would be jumping all over the road as the mist was coming up.  Not worms, like in other places, but little quarter-sized frogs that looked like green, wet, popcorn.

We rode our motorcycles all over the unfenced landscape.  Down the fire trail to the county fairgrounds, where we would fly down the dirt walkways over gentle hills.

Trees everywhere.  Places to build forts and take walks and imagine things.

Going with my friend to clean an old woman's house down the street.  The heavy smell of cigarette smoke on every surface.  The curtains, the furniture, the carpet.  And the sound of deep coughing that must have started way down in her toes as she sucked on another cancer stick.

The next door neighbors who had a huge garden filled with sweet white corn that they sometimes shared with my city-raised parents.  The fight my brother had with their son in that garden.  One swinging a rake and the other a hose.

Dragging the trash to the end of the driveway at night with a piece of board from an old ping pong table over my head to protect me from the ever-present bats that loved to dive bomb anything that dared move in the still, humid night.

Moths the size of birds that flew around the spot light we had aimed at the pool in the backyard.  So big they cast big shadows on us.

Walking to the end of the street to peek in at the pentacostal congregation singing and jumping up and down.  Being creeped out walking through their little cemetery with the leaning tombstones.

Lots of love in our house during the years we spent there.