Claymont, Part 1

I grew up in Claymont, Delaware. I was not born there; that dubious distinction falls on the unfortunate shoulders of Chester, Pennsylvania, but Claymont was home to me for almost all of my first 18 years on this planet. For many years after I left, I regarded it as a place best viewed in the rear-view mirror. I was fond of my own cheeky description when describing it to non-residents: "Claymont: A Nice Place to Leave." Slowly, as I have grown older and maybe a smidgeon more intelligent, I have come to regret those sentiments. I always regarded Claymont as a collection of bland, split-level houses, suspect apartment buildings and a biting resentment for the more affluent neighborhoods. I suppose that still exists to some degree today, but, if we're being honest here, the same could be said for almost every middle class suburban community in this country. Maybe it's taken me longer than most people to understand Claymont isn't defined by what lies in its borders, but who lives in it.

I have recently been in contact with some people from my past. This, naturally led to digging out and dusting off the old high school yearbooks - and in one case, an old middle school yearbook. What I saw shocked me. I realized the people with whom I attended school were actually some pretty likable folks. Some of them were downright terrific people. And the teachers, the ones I loathed and rebelled against so long ago were actually decent and often amazing people. It would be convenient and maybe even logically correct to tuck into my Claymont experiences by starting at the beginning, but memories played out in a chronological manner steal a little bit of the magic for me. Sometimes, it's just more emotionally satisfying to chase the rabbit down the hole and embrace whatever dirt gets kicked back into my face.

I grew up in a development known as Greentree. It was one of those 1960s-era sections perfect for the first post-World War II generation to buy an affordable house for less than $20,000. It's where the promise of newly-planted trees would deliver ample shade once the young parents of the day sent their children to college, the military or the working world a decade or two later. The streets were all named for different trees: Plum Tree, Elm Tree, Birch Tree, Walnut Tree, Peach Tree...well, you get the picture. It was Americana, with children's bike parades on the Fourth of July, Little League and flashlight tag, back when it was safe for young kids to be out, unattended, at night. Maybe it's me, but in the 1970's, it seemed there were more kids swarming throughout the neighborhood than a smacked hornet's nest. If you wanted to make mud pies, play street hockey or throw rocks at the train, you never had any difficulty finding several accomplices.

Oh that. Yeah, well, I cannot say I condone it now, but when were young, throwing rocks at the passing trains was one of our daily pastimes. The tracks were in the woods about 500 feet from my house. To hear the horn was similar to the sound of the Good Humor man in that dozens of kids high-stepped it out the door, all of us at top speed, to await our lumbering, metallic victim. The tracks had an endless supply of pirogue-sized rocks, perfect for winging. The goal was to hit the train as many times as possible and create a spark when one of the rocks hit a piece of metal JUST right. Our "station" was about 10 feet below the tracks on the west side of the slope. It was quite a sight. All these kids of varying ages rifling dangerous projectiles without any fear of danger, repercussion or common sense. The locomotive was always off-limits because, well, because we could get in trouble if the conductor slammed on the brakes. Never mind the fact by the time the train would stop, he would be miles away. We were just afraid of the railroad police which would patrol the tracks from time to time. The caboose, on the other hand, was not only fair game, it was the ultimate target. The caboose was legendary. There was always someone in the group who knew someone who knew someone who said there was a person who sat in the caboose waiting for smart-alecks like us, just aching for a chance to blast us with a salt rifle. For some reason, that never deterred us. If anything, it just made us more determined to knock the windows out of the caboose. How we all didn't end up in the Boy's Home is one of God's miracles.

We had a great cast of characters: Freddie and Donie (yes, he spelled it "Donie") Lang, who were two of the few African-American kids who would come around, the three Kevins - me, Kevin Smith and Kevin Grant, Greg Newton, Eddie Kupsick, Tommy Patton, Bobby Cook, Rich Piroli, Kenny Radke...the list was endless, but the one who made it his life's mission to enact as much anarchy wherever he went was my best friend, Raymond Butler. I'll get to him later, because he is worth an entire book by himself. Even my very first friend, Steve Jennings, who was 6 feet eight at birth and by all accounts one of the kindest, most decent people I have ever known, could get caught up in the excitement, hurling rocks at the train with such force they sucked the air out of your lungs when they whizzed over your head.

However, when trains weren't available, we needed something else to occupy our time. So what do adolescent boys do when they don't have easily-available trouble to get into? That's right, we created our own. There was a Wawa convenience store on the other side of the slope of the train tracks. We would buy or steal our daily supplies of chocolate milk, soda, chips, Tastykakes and candy and sit on the rails of the tracks, waiting for something to happen. Then, a funny thing would happen. No one would leave. No one would leave because the minute you descended the rock-covered slope and disappeared into the canopy of trees of the adjacent woods, someone - usually Freddy, but we were all guilty - would yell "Rock 'em!" and with that, dozens upon dozens of rocks would rain down in the projected direction of the kid who had the temerity to leave the boredom of a hot July day at the tracks to go do something else. When we weren't attempting to cold-cock our friends, our rock-throwing would be focused on the back of the mini-strip mall that housed the Wawa: Carpenter Station. There was a dance studio which would sometimes have the back door open for ventilation. Claymont was a blue collar town, which is another way of saying, "We mock what we don't understand." Culture, especially dancing, was lost on a bunch of scraggly-haired delinquents such as us. So, we responded in the best way we knew how, by trying to throw rocks through the back door of the studio. Can you imagine watching these dangerous missiles skipping across the floor as young girls are practicing their five positions, chassés and chaînés? When the prospect of being strangled by the dancers' fathers proved off-putting, we shifted our attention one door down to the back of the arcade.

It was known as "The Arc," but the official name was TJ's, I believe. The owner's father pretty much ran the place but we understood the "true" ownership was in the name of his infant grandson, for tax purposes. The back door was made of this very resonant aluminum, which, when struck by a rock, would make a sound so loud, neighbors several hundred yards away thought we dynamited a garbage truck. Eventually, you just want a place to hang out and even brainless miscreants like us realized we needed to find a more constructive way to be destructive; a better target, in other words. So, we chose each other.

We already had been used to having rocks showering down on us whenever we left the sanctity of the tracks. In time, you do things like try to pick off bottles we set up on the rails. Sometimes, we wouldn't wait for the person setting up to get out of the way, which was usually followed by "I'm going to kill you!" or "You son of a..." This eventually evolved - or devolved - into us breaking into teams maybe 30 yards away and firing rocks at each other. There was no malice intended; it was just a way to burn up the hours of a lazy summer afternoon. Sometimes, when it was just Ray and me, we would station ourselves 50 feet from each other and try to bean the other. We did have rules, though. You had to wait for the other guy to throw his rock first before your next throw, no decoy lobs in order to set up a kill shot, and skipping shots off the rail was worth double. So, there we would be, best friends trying to brain each other while talking about how this new guy, Dallas Green, was going to be a better or worse manager for the Phillies than Danny Ozark, the new Kansas album or when Ray was going to go back home and steal money from his mom's purse so we could grab a pizza pie in Northtowne Plaza next to the Super Saver grocery store.

While Ray and I could generate our own brand of mischief, sometimes it came gift-wrapped to us. Like many neighborhoods, people are always up in each others' business. My community was no different. When Gina Giantonio's house went up in flames on Elm Tree Lane, the crowd was so thick it was like people were waiting for Jesus himself to emerge from the flames. It was the social event of the season. Cute girls you always liked never failed to show up (I'm looking at you, Barb and Carol Tenshaw and Christine Lewandowski). Adult neighbors would be standing, cross-armed, shaking their heads at how disgraceful it was so many people are watching someone else's life being destroyed in full public view. The volunteer fire fighters were looked at like rock stars, including our friend, James Mayfield, a high school student and the first African-American volunteer fire fighter in Claymont. It had all the makings of a block party. All we needed was a hot dog cart, sparklers and someone selling t-shirts with iron-on decals of bug-eyed maniacs power-shifting over-sized GTO engines. Standing there with Ray, watching the Giantonios' house being destroyed wasn't really celebrating the fact, though. Not a single one of us didn't imagine our thoughts if it was our own house. Even Gina and her younger brother Nicky would have attended the burning of someone else's house. There was something intoxicating about sharing a terrible event with others. It brought the residents closer, in some weird way. A camaraderie gets forged, if only for a little while. These weren't necessarily bad people, and truth be told, we weren't evil kids. We simply had a destructive streak that was meant to fill the boredom of the days.

I think perhaps I held a distaste for Claymont because it held up a mirror to myself, of all the distasteful things I was in denial about in my own character, but I now realize circumstance and subjective limitations cloud the mind. These weren't bad people. In fact, we had some very good people. People like James Mayfield, Steve Jennings and the people who offered their help and support to the Giantonios, among many, many others. It's a reason I am returning to my roots to write this series of valentines to the place I called home for so many years and has shaped me, for better or worse, into the person I am today. I don't know where this road may lead, much as I did not know where it was leading all those years ago, but I want to invite you along with me to discover something that will exist within me forever and maybe give you a chance to visit a place of your own you may have left behind. It may not be the same location as mine, but it might be the same place:

Home.