Suburban Home
by Charles Clayton
Blue Meannie records was a windowless cave of a record store right around the corner from my house. Owned and run by aging hippies (hence the Yellow Submarine inspired moniker), it was the quintessential mom and pop store, and they had a nice fat PUNK section chock full of hundreds of records that promised countless hours of perusal and serious discussion. No job, at least not at first, rarely any money, at least not 8 to ten bucks at a time, so if there was enough cash in your pocket to purchase an album then it was done carefully and deliberately.
It might take two hours to decide on an album, standing there comparing song titles, cover art, and photos of the band (long hair usually meant cheesy speed metal guitars—avoid)…debating between the Adolescents and The Dicks, the Germs and the Battalion of Saints, Discharge and Minor Threat (AND WHAT ABOUT this compilation album with 20 different bands on it?) bands that (at first) you had never heard but maybe you’d spotted a filthy SNFU t-shirt on the homeless gutter punk who (literally) just crawled out of the sewer, or noticed that the guitarist for a band you did know was wearing a GOVERNMENT ISSUE t-shirt on the back cover of one of your trusted albums, or maybe you had a 5th generation hissy bass heavy recording of an unknown G.B.H. album dubbed over (scotch tape covering the protective slots on the cassette) an old Styx tape so you make your best guess and give it a try, plunking down your single ten dollar bill for 12 inches of vinyl record—but there was no way to be sure about your purchase until you got it home, ripped the shrink wrap off, and put the needle to the vinyl.
That was the moment of truth. The slight popping as the needle found the first groove, the hint of buzzing through the speakers, a few spins of the record, and then THE CHORDS OF ESCAPE, CHORDS OF REVOLUTION, CHORDS OF ANGER, CHORDS OF HOPE blast through your bedroom and change your life forever and ever.
There is no sound on earth as powerful as an electric guitar.
The Heights of Subdivision
by Gary Feuerman
I’m from Subdivision. Levittown was 20 minutes away, the first symbol of suburban sprawl, and the first of the big developments. I lived in East Norwich, NY, on Long Island, in a little development. The house my family moved into in 1966 (built in 1960) when I was 2 1/2 was a brown, wood shingled, 4 bedroom colonial at the top of a rise looking due west to a high hill dense with tall oak trees. It was that hill and the massive cumulus clouds sailing the sky above it that first reminded me that I loved mountains. I’d never seen mountains, but I knew I needed them.
When my parents bought the World Book Encyclopedia collection from a traveling salesman in 1970, I immediately hunted down and committed to memory the tallest peaks in the world and the highest points in each state of the union, which is how even today if you ask me for the highest elevation in New York State, I’d tell you Mt. Marcy in the Adirondack State Park at 5,344’. Yes, 5,344’. I’d never been close to Mt. Marcy – the closest we got in my childhood was the Catskill Mountains, which top out around 4,000’ but are mostly in the 2,000’ – 3,000’ range. And it didn’t matter that 5,344’ was unimpressive, even puny compared to Mt. Everest (29,028’ back then) and the other Himalayan peaks, the Alps, the Rockies, the Andes – hell even Mt. Mitchell in North Carolina was over 6,000’ (6,684’ comes to mind), as was Clingman’s Dome in the Great Smokies (6,643’) and Mt. Washington in the Presidential Range of New Hampshire’s White Mountains (6,288’).
I have to stop here. Is it me or do you notice that all of these peaks have a double number (other than Everest which had consecutive numbers 29/28)…Time to play the lottery? Am I giving away the fact that I have a gambling compulsion that runs in the family and that my dad taught my brother and I how to play craps by the ages of 6 and 8 on a mini crap table in the semi-finished basement (off white with a brick pattern and classic go-go era wood paneling) playing with chunky red die from Caesers Palace, Las Vegas and a giant glass pretzel jar filled with shiny pennies for betting loot.
So what about Mt. Marcy? Well, it was over a mile high, so that was cool, and it was a lot higher than the high points in New Jersey or Connecticut or even Massachusetts, Delaware, Maryland and Pennsylvania. We had Vermont beat, too. I’m all over the place like a dream, and I’m thinking that although the gut response to Levittown or even East Norwich and our ¼ acre lots lined with sapling maples and oaks and the beat up “station cars” our fathers drove to the trains that went to the City is one of disgust and despair over the monotony and homogeneity of this branch of human evolution, it is from this place that I knew I was for and from another place. And for that I am grateful – to the forested hill to my west above which I gazed many mornings after climbing on top of my wooden, nautical-style dresser and pressing my face against the window as if I were standing on the pitch of roof where I once saw Santa’s reindeer and prayed to God that Pamela Maloney would be my girlfriend, and later wished that I would find a place where I didn’t have to make believe the clouds were mountains.
Ticky Tacky
by Johanna DeBiase
Each driveway, each yard, repeats itself over and over like the turning spokes on my bicycle. I know Nellie's house from memory. Unlike people who don't live here, I can identify it by minute details – the rose bush entwined around the fence post, the American flag just slightly askew, a welcome sign with banjo playing frogs hanging next to the door.
I drop my bike on the curb. I know no one will disturb it. No one around here needs an old bike. Most kids get a shiny new one each year. I ring her bell as a formality, but then I walk right in. Their entryway is identical to my own, the split ranch stairway – up to the living room, only used when guests are over; down to the den, used the rest of the time.
Nellie's room is downstairs off the den because she is the oldest child and earned her privacy and own bathroom. I head down there and find her in front of her computer listening to Adele again. She's on Facebook. She looks up at me. “Come check this out,” she says. She is looking at an aerial photo of a slum in India. Children below, kicking around a ball. It is a punchline to a joke and she thinks its hilarious.
I laugh awkwardly. I can't help noticing how, from this perspective up above, the roof of the shacks lined up in such a way, so close together, so similar, they remind me of this neighborhood. I imagine if I built our giant houses from cardboard boxes, stuffed our mattresses with plastic bags, and landscaped our yards with bottles and old clothes. Candy wrappers, banana peels and tin cans line our sidewalks where cows graze and defecate. It would only take a strong breeze, one big gust of wind, to shake this delusion of security.
Taylors Mill, Devonshire, Laurel Glen
by Ned Dougherty
each house looked the same
and averaged that quirky number of children
we read about in parenting magazines
the fathers all left in their sedans
right near eight
and returned to dinner on the table
the neighborhood could field entire teams
for street hockey or football
or lawn manicurists
quasi friend-neighbors
who wave from opposite
sides of the street
one yard had a rock like an island for GI Joes
the other a hill larger in memory than true rise and run
and the last that iconic picket fence
what do they create
these collectives
aside from adolescent dreams of great distances
these places we run so far from
returning to kiss our mothers
and tackle the list of chores waiting for us since we left
making connections
by Robin Powlesland
stunning the geographic distance
between myself and what is acceptable
in structures of light and glass
filtered species of thought
giving way through cloud and sky and flight
it stretches as far as my finger outlines
the scratched surface of thick plastic
and diamond shaped soil
stunning how odd I am in the stepping off
of curb and pretending that street is mine
that space is mine and thought is mine
remixing the replication is a new form
of education and it's all surprised by shopping
the activity of hunting and gathering
and then of course eating with strangers
and loved ones and then sleeping
it's a fought for reality between the haves
and have nots - the right to talk about education
to relinquish small tools for larger ones
to access other countries through soap stars
quickly layered one after another
sitting in rows - silently typing our speaking
questions to shout out to each other
sitting next to one another - strangers
and loved ones and then sleeping
mica in short spurts on sidewalks
bringing what was out here distantly
to what is now through conversation
remaking of dialogue and connected learning
I can no longer live inside those walls
that still contain us now
foraging meals and conversation
picking through best practices and strangers
losing loved ones and then sleeping
