Dillonvalle was a completely new subdivision. Lots of the homes looked just like the little red ones on the Monopoly board, but we had a split-level.

Nearly all of the homeowners were just like my Mom and Dad: young and Catholic with lots of kids.

The street we lived on was named Glengary. As all the new homeowners were of the same age, they all bonded. To this day my Mom (my Dad recently died) go to events and parties with “The Glengary Crowd”.

What I remember first and foremost are the swarms of kids. Unlike kids today, we didn’t spend hardly any time inside our homes, summer or winter. We’d come home from school, and it was “Go outside and play”. I have no vivid memories of the inside of any of my friend’s homes.

We’d play Hide and Seek, Freeze Tag, or Kill The Man With The Ball. We’re talking groups of ten, twenty, thirty or forty kids. Maybe more.

It was incredibly wonderful.

Flying kites was a big thing. We’d buy roll after roll of string and fly them so high that you could hardly see them. I remember one time, we tied the kite off to the swing set, as it was time to go to bed. Next morning, it was still up there.

Bows and arrows were big at one point. We’d try to shoot down the flying kite.

Sleepovers in tents in our backyard were weekly events in the summertime. I can still remember the smell of those tents. Sometimes we’d go for walks to Dunkin Donuts in the middle of the night because it was a 24-hour place. That was very exciting, as it was a mile or two away.

Outside cookouts were commonplace. On summer evenings there was always the smell of grilled hotdogs and hamburgers in the air.

Then there was “The Woods”. Unlike Mayflower, where the woods comprised of a small patch of trees, this was serious acreage. In my child’s eye/memory, it was a vast wilderness. Sometimes we’d find old abandoned rabbit traps back there, which always made me think that we had just missed the wild frontier.

Climbing trees was a big thing. We each had our own. We’d climb to the very top where the limbs became thin so that we could sway in the breeze. I was always utterly fearless when it came to me, but I remember being scared to death watching my friends do the same.

There was a creek running through the woods that had a lot of natural clay in its banks. We’d dig it out, smash it, massage it, and make things.

Whenever there was a heavy rain, there would be numerous condoms in the creek. They would snag on rocks and fill with water. We never knew what they were, and just assumed they had something to do with rain and creeks.

One time for my birthday, I was given a BB Gun. I’d always try to shoot birds and stuff, but was never successful, until one time, I killed a mother robin in her nest. Next day, her babies were all laying dead at the foot of the tree. I felt horrible. I never shot at another living thing ever again.

I would often go back in the woods by myself. There was this old lady who would sometimes walk the creek, reciting some kind of prayer (The Rosary?) in a foreign language. I would hide and watch her.

Sometimes, me and other boys, usually instigated by me, would play naked games in the woods. Sticking twigs up our butts and stuff like that. I just loved naked anything. My fondest desire was to do the same with a girl, as I was intensely curious to see what they had down there, but the opportunity never arose. I remember having a dream that their vaginas had teeth.

One time, quite unexpectedly, a Goodyear blimp flew over our house rather low at night, with all the writing scrolling by on its skin. It was like seeing a flying saucer - lights in the sky with very little noise.

I remember watching Sputnik fly by in the night sky – a slow moving star.

My best friend was Timmy B. He was the same age as me. He was my best friend, but was always picking fights with me. I remember one time, we were fighting, and my Mom was walking by, and he said, “There goes your old lady”. I got mad and punched him in the mouth, but I really didn’t want to. It always perplexed me. It was like he wanted me to not like him.

He was also the first guy to tell me about jerking off. We were up in a tree at the time. He said that his sperm came out clear, but it would turn white when we got older. He said that it felt really good. I went home and tried it right away. Mine was white already, but he was right about it feeling really good. Jerking off became a favorite pastime.

Riding bikes was huge. Everyone had one.

My clearest memory of bikedom is riding down the street, as a big storm was approaching, feeling very exhilarated. I’ve always loved big storms.

Along those lines, I remember, back then, Glengary days, wishing that my Mom and Dad would get divorced. This is really odd, when considering that we were Catholic, and divorce was extremely rare at that time. I always felt bad about having such thoughts, as we were as good of a family as any. It’s not like there was a lot of arguing going on or anything. I think I was simply bored with the predictability of it all. I had zero experience with anything other than, but somehow knew that the whole Catholic, life within boundaries, non-sexual relationship thing was totally lame. I just wanted change. Excitement. Passion. Something spontaneous and unpredictable.

All the kids went to Saint Savior grade school. We’d all walk to the top of the street and stand in a long line waiting for the bus. It was a Catholic school with lots of nuns who were still wearing black habits back then. They all seemed mean and incredibly unhappy to me. I remember thinking that they must have barbed wire wrapped around their bodies beneath the habits as some kind of penance, as surely it was unnatural to be so mean and unhappy. Sometimes we would get in trouble and they would tell us to hold out our hand, which they would slap with a wooden ruler. I was always getting report cards with “fails to live up to his potential” checked. I remember one time, failing a spelling test, and defending myself by saying that I only got one letter wrong in each word. I don’t know why I remember such things.

May Day, the Crowning of the Blessed Virgin Statue in her grotto, was a big event. We’d sing songs, and it was hard not to be caught up in the spirit of it all. I remember wanting to be a martyr for Christ, as that seemed to be the most exciting road to go. I have always been an excitement junkie.

I played for the school football team, The Golden Bears, in 6th, 7th and 8th grade. Football was serious business at that school. Practices were like Marines boot camp, only probably harder. If coaches did today what they did to us back then, they’d be put in jail. We’d have tackling practice on a dummy without helmets. There was a bloody spot where everyone’s ear would start to rip from their head. “Hit the spot”. We’d do “6 Inch” drills where we had to lay on our backs and raise our feet 6 inches off the ground and hold it. The coach would walk from stomach to stomach. He was wearing cleats at the time. There were no bottles of water on the field. Rather, at the conclusion of practice, there was this round tub filled with water that everyone scooped into their mouths with dirty hands. It quickly turned muddy, but we didn’t care, because we were dying of thirst. “Look at them. They are a bunch of animals”, the coach would say with laughter. And we were. We took pride in it. Our bodies were rock hard.

The big game of the year was The Turkey Bowl on Thanksgiving Day, when we played our archrival, the Saint John Eagles. I played guard on offense, linebacker on defense. Most everyone played both offense and defense. If you were good, you never left the field for the entire game.

I was pretty good, but I didn’t have the killer mentality of some of the other kids. If a guy jumped in the air to catch a ball, I’d let him come down to the ground before tackling him, which disappointed the coaches and the crowd.

We started to have boy/girl parties in the eighth grade. There was an in-crowd of both boys and girls, and I was one of them by default because I played football. Everyone paired up, but I didn’t know how to play the game. I was never aggressive with getting girls. I more or less simply went with whoever showed up. My girl ended up being Debbie, because she was the last one left. I don’t recall if I ever kissed her.

We had a station wagon when we lived on Glengary. It was blue and white. The back seat faced backwards and had a sliding window that you could crank down. We would tie plastic army men to string and drag them, watching them bounce around.

Sometimes we would drive out to Blue Ash airport where you could park at the end of the runway and the small planes would land just over our heads.

We started to go to Florida for our summer vacations. We always went to Saint Petersburg.

By the time we moved from Dillonvalle, there were eight kids in the family: Bobby, Timmy, Jeff, Julie, Christy, Chuck, Mark and Doug.

I was Doug’s godfather. My Mom asked me to be, because she said I loved kids so much, which was true. I was always volunteering to babysit.

But also, I think, it was because I was my Mom’s favorite kid back then.