Bewley Road

When we moved from Lakeshire (suburb near St. Louis) to Havertown (suburb near Philadelphia) we ended up buying a house on Bewley Rd. But before I dive into that topic there's a Lakeshire story that I haven't told yet:

When I started riding a bicycle I was under strict orders from my Mom never to get on the bike unless I was wearing shoes. So (of course) one weekend when I was 6 and my parents were out of town (left us with a sitter) I decided to go for a bike ride around Lakeshire wearing my "flip-flops" - I mean, what could go wrong? So, I was standing up pedaling hard up a slight hill when my left foot slipped. My toes hit the ground first, and the movement of the bike caused my foot to flip so the top of it got dragged along the pavement (with my full weight on it) thereby turning it into a bloody mess... Luckily I was riding my sister's (bigger) girl's bike so when I slipped I didn't suffer the expected 'crotch damage'. BTW - That upper cross-member on boy's bikes is another one of those 'natural selection' things - it's clearly intended to be a sterilization mechanism for incompetent riders :-) But I digress...
Now, I could not tell the babysitter about the injury because she would tell my mom and I'd have to admit that I disobeyed her and I couldn't possibly do that :-) So I just always wore socks until that foot healed. (I threw away the initial bloody ones and yes, the socks did tend to stick to the wounds for a while).

But here's the point (counterpoint?) of that particular story: If there was one thing that motivated me above all else during my childhood it was pain avoidance. Yes - I cannot stand to feel pain (just ask my wife - she'll tell you what a wuss I am). I did screw up occasionally (as the above story illustrates) but I was generally cautious and made it through my entire childhood without a single stitch or broken bone.
That also explains why I sucked at baseball (and other such sports) even though I was one of the fastest kids around and had incredible reflexes. I loved playing but my primary motivation was to avoid getting hit by the ball :-)

In other words, I was the exact opposite of almost every other boy on Bewley Road. I have never seen so many fearless, reckless, aggressive alpha male types on one blocks in my life. (OK... I know it doesn't compare with a typical inner city block but this was the suburbs.)
Hardly a month went by without somebody going to the emergency room. From fights (stitches and head wounds) to catching squirrels (stitches and rabies shots), to getting pushed out of trees (broken arms and legs) - not to mention the occasional firework mishap. It was quite a hostile environment for a pain-o-phobe like me :-)

There were a lot of kids on the block. The Devines were our neighbors on the right and had 3 girls and 2 boys. The Bradfields lived on the other side of the Devines and had 7 kids including 4(?) boys. The Crofts were our neighbors on the left and had 4 boys. The Howleys were a couple of doors past the Crofts and had 5 boys. Libby's family on the corner (the O'somethings?) had 7 or 8 kids. Not to mention a number of families with 2 or 3 kids. I can't even imagine what it was like before our house's prior owners moved away with their 14 kids (the oldest was 16).

So that was Bewley Road back in the day - I'll leave the details for a future post...