1100 Reid Street, CLOVIS, N.M. MIL'S HOME, 1940'S
---WHITE HOUSE, ON CORNER---
We moved into a really nice little brand-new two-BR home
that long-ago day of October 3, 1940. The address was 1100
Reid, Clovis, N.M. I figure it was almost seventy-seven years
ago.
It was a well-built house with interior plaster walls, real
hard wood floors, floor furnace heat, and a big picture window
in front with many panes. It had a wooden shingle roof and
was stuccoed all over with off-white.
It was an attractive neighborhood eventually stretching behind
the new Clovis Memorial Hospital---all the way to 14th Street.
That early fall day we moved in is memorable because every-
thing in the house smelled new---the paint, the varnish, the
walls...and for some reason my parents elected to go to the
Curry County Fair that night and we bought some orange
slices somewhere.
We lived there all through the WWII years and eventually our
home had elm trees, all around the front and sides. As in the
manner of folks of that time, we had a cow/horse barn and pen,
a chicken house, rabbit hutches, and a Victory Garden.
We may have had a pig or two...once. In those days, we must
remember, many were fresh off being raised in a farm.
The elms trees grew to twenty feet tall or higher in just a few
years. We little kids were notoriously "suspicious" of everything
and spent much time siting up in these trees amongst the cool
leaves---spying on the world.
I believe it was 1941 when the wettest year in Clovis' history
occurred. That fall it rained and rained and water backed up
out of the dry lake bed at the end of 14th Street, and people
had boats out on vacant lots NW of us..
After a good shower, water would just come gushing down
our curb at 1100. We'd cut boats out of 2X4's and float 'em
away.
There was no TV in those starved-for-recreation times. We
had to be our own entertainment and use our imaginations.
We had comic books galore, radio programs on week nights
until 9 p.m. (static permitting), and of course our Saturday
afternoon westerns, serials, Tarzan and Charlie Chan movies.
And sometimes a good sword-fighting "show." With us, it was..
"go to the show..." not "go to the movies."
Thus our domiciles, backyards, front yards, trees, bushes, and
sometimes roof-tops---became the venues, the sets, the locales
for action scenarios of all kinds that we would devise in our
imaginations....in order to have entertainment...and not die of
boredom.
Now we all know that any self-respecting venue for action
events, scenes, occurrences (or movies) requires water---a lake
or a river or an ocean
After all, even the Coliseum of Roman times, out on dry land,
often had naval battles enacted within its walls! With an ocean!
It just so happened that in the summer of 1940, when my dad was
planting his lawn, that inadvertently a sizeable low place was left
there by the front corner of the house....and he planted clover, and
our lawn was always about half clover.
When this "low spot" matured and was filled with water, it made
a nice "clovery lake." maybe five inches deep. Slick and slippery!
So on many hot summer afternoons in Clovis, where there was no
air conditioning at that time--- and with the B24's training to go off
and fight overseas---as they were droning around the outskirts of
town---we were having marvelously cool times...splashing in that
"low place" at the corner of our lawn.
We wore either cut-offs or swim suits.
"SEE---I'm a Jap Zero shot down and crashing! " SPLASH!
"SEE---he plugs me with his six-shooter and I fall off my horse!"
SPLASH!
"SEE---my car is on fire and I have to leap out!" SPLASH!
Now I reckon every little boy should have a "low place"
somewhere that he can fill with water. Or do kids play the
same way nowadays?
***************
One day in 1980 I was back in Clovis for a visit and I drove
by
my old childhood home of WWII Days...a place where we
played and played as I have noted....and a happy place of
many Fibber McGee and Molly, Red Skelton, People Are
Funny, Bob Hope, What's My Line?, The Hit Parade, and more...
Also radio shows, Monopoly, Lincoln Logs, Tinker Toys,
Chinese Checkers...
There was a truck out front...the door was open...and the
house was being remodeled. I knocked and chatted with
the remodeler, and walked throughout the house.
It had not changed much since we left 32 years before. The
kitchen linoleum was the same...the hardwood floors had new
varnish and looked like new...the two driveway windows
were open all the way...the ones from where we heard FDR's
fireside chats wafting out on warm summer nights...
The old house was in pretty good shape after giving shelter
and warmth for a good many years.
The elms trees were all gone. Someone had let the lawns
die up and down the block. There was no grass, or very
little, down the street.
The years had come along also for me...I had a fine family
and responsibilities that occupied my mind...and things to
do and promises to keep....and so I visited with the
technician and wistfully walked out...
....but I regret to tell you...I forgot to check and see if our
low spot that we lived so much in those hot simpler
early times of life...was still there...
....at the corner.
***********
MIL
5 JUNE 17
Photo by Bob Snipes (who played there...)
CIRCA 2015
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