The Rock Road

Our Little World

What made our neighborhood different wasn't the streets or the houses. It was the people in it.

For years, my family was the Black family in our part of New City. There weren't other Black families for miles. The next ones I knew lived across the main road in another community and another school district. We could practically see those kids from where we lived, but when we were younger, they might as well have belonged to another world.

Eventually, three of those kids crossed that little divide and became part of ours.

Our usual meeting place was the street just before the Rock Road, where some of our friends lived. Most nights, that's where we started, and sometimes that's where we stayed. We'd have our boom boxes playing, smoke cigarettes, talk, laugh, and just hang around.

The Rock Road wasn't an every-night thing. In the summer especially, the mosquitoes could make staying back there miserable. But if we had some beers, or wanted more privacy, we'd make our way around to the Rock Road. Sometimes we'd cut through a friend's backyard, but only if we knew we wouldn't disturb his family.

And sometimes we didn't decide to go back there at all.

Somebody else decided for us.

A neighbor would apparently get tired of seeing a bunch of teenagers hanging around with boom boxes and cigarettes and call the police. If we saw the police coming around looking for trouble, we'd disappear onto the Rock Road.

Back there, we could be left alone.

Once we were there, everything outside of our little group seemed farther away.

We didn't know everything happening in one another's homes. We didn't always talk about what we were carrying. But somehow, we looked after each other anyway.

If somebody didn't show up, eventually somebody went looking.

Sometimes you didn't need a phone call.

You needed to see your friend's face.

And for a few hours, whatever was happening at home, at school, with family, with relationships, or with the rest of the world could stay somewhere else.

The Rock Road was where we could just be us.

The neighborhood today. The old Rock Road ran along the far left side of this view. The street just before it was our usual meeting place.

Treasure Hunting

Twice a year came bulk pickup, and to us that meant treasure hunting.

We didn't just search our own neighborhood. We'd walk or ride our bikes around, and if we spotted a pile in front of somebody's house, we'd head that way to see what they were throwing away.

Anything with wheels was a prize.

Office chairs. Garage dollies. Rolling serving carts. Once, a rollaway bed with the mattress still on it.

I lived at the bottom of a hill, but farther up the road, where some of my good friends lived, was an even steeper one.

That was the goal.

Find something with wheels, get it to the top, and see if we could ride it down.

But sometimes we found actual treasure.

The two boys readers know from the book as Damian and Adonis once went out looking for something they could ride and came back with something for me instead.

An album called Too Beautiful for Words.

The cover was perfect and the record was still inside. They decided I should have it.

I kept that album for decades.

I miss the treasure hunts.

The People of the Rock Road

The people in The Rock Road weren't just kids I happened to grow up with.

They were people I trusted.

We were funny together. Reckless together. Sometimes unbelievably stupid together. We found adventures where there weren't supposed to be any, and when somebody came up with a ridiculous idea, I probably should have been the responsible one because I was usually the oldest.

I wasn't.

I was normally right behind them.

But underneath all that craziness was something much more important.

We protected each other.

When somebody threatened one of us, somebody else stepped forward. When somebody was hurting, there was usually someone willing to sit on a boulder on the Rock Road and listen. Sometimes you needed advice. Sometimes you needed somebody to tell you that you were absolutely right and shouldn't back down.

And sometimes you needed a friend to tell you that you were being ridiculous.

We did that too.

The boys readers know as Damian and Adonis came from across that main road, from the other neighborhood that had once seemed almost like another world. But from the moment we met, there was a bond.

Damian was sentimental in ways you might not expect. When he finally decided he had outgrown the tail he'd worn with his DA haircut, he asked me to cut it off. He took it from me, kissed it, handed it back and told me to keep it so I'd remember him. He also gave me the leather gloves he'd worn while riding the trike.

I still have both.

Adonis and I had our own connection. Readers of the book may remember the shooting star and the kiss that was supposed to bring its magic.

We remembered it too.

Years later, we still talked about it.

Some of us stayed in touch for years. Others moved away and life separated us. Some I've found again. Some I haven't. And there are people I would still like to find.

The Ones Who Didn't Make the Book

There were other kids in that neighborhood too.

They mattered.

Some belonged to different groups and only joined us occasionally. Some had parents who kept them close to home. Some were busy with sports, school, religion, family, or completely different lives. They might appear for an afternoon or an evening, disappear for a while, and then show up again.

They were still part of the neighborhood.

They just weren't there for the particular adventures that became The Rock Road.

As I wrote in the book, to the neighborhood kids who didn't make it into the story:

You dodged a bullet.

They weren't hiding Pearl with us. They weren't being followed. They weren't there when some of our ordinary teenage stupidity turned into something much bigger.

But they're still part of what I remember when I think about growing up there.

Decades later, when I picture all of us together, the first thing I feel is very simple.

I miss them.

I'd love to put everybody in one place again. The people in the book and the ones who never made it onto a page. The ones I haven't spoken to in years and the ones I've managed to find again.

There was no great falling-out that ended us.

We simply grew up.

Life took everybody somewhere else.

But for a while, we were family.