I spent the first 8 years of my life living on the corner of Hazelwood and Ashford Parkway in Houston.  It was a great street to live on.  My friends were Nick Baker, Robbie Cooksey, and Bobby Skinner.  We got into lots of trouble together, as will be reflected in the next few posts.

I went to a private school, so my neighborhood friends didn’t go to school with me, but we found plenty of time to hang out anyway.  Our favorite things to do included playing baseball in the cul-de-sac, shooting chinaberries with a slingshot at the “middle street” kids, playing football in my yard, and riding our Bigwheels.

Of course, as we got older, things got more serious, and we started playing “spin the bottle,” “truth or dare,” and other boy-girl games.  Those were good times.  I always wanted to get to kiss Julie Baker, but it never seemed to work out, and I always got stuck with the girls I didn’t like.  C’est la vie, I guess.

I remember that the Miller family always had the best Halloween decorations.  Usually, one of their sons would get on the roof and activate some kind of ghoul or goblin on a rope that would drop out of the darkness on an unsuspecting trick or treater.  They had everything from dry ice smoke to eerie lights to scary sound effects.  It was always a highlight.

Hazelwood was a great street to grow up on.  There was much fodder for “stories,” as you will soon see.