The Camille Street Gang

In the mid-1960’s, Camille Street was the social hub of my small hometown of Senatobia, Mississippi.  At least it was for the pre-teen jet-setters that formed my circle of friends.

Camille Street was slap dab in the middle of “Dogwood Hills,” the only neighborhood of new, modern homes.  All the homes looked different on the outside, but inside they were all the same.  Three bedrooms – all on one hallway; 1.5 baths – the master bedroom got the half bath; eat-in kitchen; living room; and double carport.  Most had shag carpet, tiny pink and white tiles in the bathrooms, harvest gold or avocado green appliances and sliding closet doors that were forever “jumping the tract” so that most everyone’s closet doors stayed half open all the time.  All of this glory was situated on a 70X120 square foot patch of grass.  It was new; it was modern; it was hip – homeownership for all the upwardly mobile young couples with 3 kids and a dog.  Most had grown up on farms in rural Mississippi and they wanted something better for their children, so they moved to town.

I heard once that Camille Street was named after the mayor’s wife.  I never met the mayor or his wife and I never saw a single dogwood tree in my neighborhood.

It was difficult to drive down Camille Street on most summer days.  The street was always filled with kids and their bikes, roller skates or skate boards, kids chasing dogs, mamas shooing toddles away from the street, or dogs chasing kids.  We had our own form of traffic control – it was called “Mama.”  Come racing down our street and you were liable to get a stern look from a dozen different mamas.  “Where do they think they are, Memphis?”  I often heard my mama say.

I guess Ricky was the first of us to move to Camille Street.  He must have been 4 or 5 when my family first came to see the new house my daddy bought for us.  Ricky laid in his front yard across the street and shot at me with his toy gun.  It was love at first sight – and we have been best friends ever since.  In 1963, my sister, Gail, my brother, Andy, and I were the second group of kids to move to our end of Camille Street.  My younger brother, Jeff, was born a few years later.  Charlotte, John, Jr. and Mike were the next to move there – our dads drove Wonder Bread trucks together.  Next came Kathy & Jackie and then Lisa Mac and Little Linda.  Mikie, Pam and Debbie lived just up the street as did Bob Brownlee.  I don’t know why we always called everyone by just their first name, except for Bob.  He was always Bob Brownlee.    At the other end of the street were Wade & Kelvin, Beverly and Betty Kay. 

Oh, and Ricky, Lila and Jeffrey Rikard.    Bless their hearts!  They were Yankees – the only people from the North we ever knew and we made such fun of the way they talked.  Their dad did not have a real job – he was a writer.  Their mom wore “dressing gowns” – which to us just meant she walked around in her housecoat.  Worst of all, they had cats!  CATS!  On our all-dog street.  We treated those poor kids like they were Martians or Nazis – the two things we feared the most.  They finally went back north and to this day, that house seems to be jinxed.  Nobody ever lives there very long.

The best part of growing up on Camille Street – and I’m sure what made us the envy of the rest of the kids in the town – was the fact that there was a community swimming pool and baseball field right in the center of our neighborhood.  As early as March, the bright lights of the baseball field would pop on at 5 pm for spring practice, a sure sign that summer was just around the corner.  About a week after the last day of school, the air around the neighborhood would be fragrant with the smell of chlorine – the pool was finally open!  We swam every day and played baseball every night.  After the baseball game, we sat in someone’s yard, sucking on concession stand grape or cherry sour pops, and told ghost stories.  The tales got taller and taller until someone got scared and went home.  Other nights, we played “Bears are out tonight” – a game where we would scatter throughout the neighborhood and hide from the designated “bears” whose job it was to find out and scare the devil out of us.  Screams and laughter filled the night as we ran through the backyards and streets, barefooted as Cooter Brown, seeking refuge from the bears.  This went on for hours until we were exhausted and hot – then we would sit on the curb and laugh about who got so tickled they wet their pants.  Around 10 pm, porch lights started flickering up and down the street – our signal that it was time to come in for the night.

Bright and early the next morning, sleepy-eyed and full of chocolate milk and Sugar Frosted Flakes, we started all over again.

We were all around the same age – went to the same school, had the same classes with the same teachers.  But, we had only one set of encyclopedias among us.  If one of us had to do a report on the solar system, we had to call around the neighborhood to see who had the “S” Book of Knowledge.  “Ricky, you got the S encyclopedia?”  “No, I got the W and the B.  I think Charlotte has the S.”  This went on every time one of us had to write a report.

All of our mamas were at home during the day time and most of us were called in around 11:30 to eat our bologna sandwich and drink our Kool-Aid so that we would be out of our moms' hair before their afternoon stories came on.  My mama saved her ironing for the time that “Days of Our Lives” and “As the World Turns” came on.  She would throw my daddy’s white cotton shirts in the freezer for a couple of hours and then steam iron them with a few sprinkles from a used  Coke bottle filled with water, the top of which she had punched holes in with an ice pick and put back on the bottle.  I can close my eyes and see my mother in her hot pink stretchy pants, her hair in a highly teased bouffant, swaying back and forth over the ironing board, eyes on the console TV, shaking her head and clucking her tongue at the goings on of the Horton family in Salem or the Hughes family in Oakdale.  At precisely 3 pm, my mama – and all the other mamas on Camille Street, started their supper so that it would be ready when our daddies came home around 5:30.

We all started first grade together and eventually graduated high school together.  Our moms took us to stand in line one hot July morning in 1965 to get our polio sugar cube.  Afterwards, we walked down to the Rexall and got a Coke on ice.  A rare treat. 

Ricky and I were in my mother’s new convertible going to my grandmother’s house when the radio announced that President John F. Kennedy had been shot.  Both of us cried – not because of the president – but because we were driving through a bad storm and a tree branch came crashing through the cloth convertible top and onto the back seat on us just as the somber radio announcer told of the national tragedy.  My mother cried because her new car was ruined.   That was a really bad day.

All of us on Camille Street had our first dates together, got our driver’s license together (Kathy was first!), and had our hearts broken together.  In high school, we could not wait to get out of school and leave Camille Street.  Some went to Ole Miss, others to MSU or Northwest.  All of us eventually left.  On the many trips I made back to see my parents, Camille Street started to look smaller, somehow.  Those cutting-edge, modern homes of the ‘60 have seemed tiny, the big yards empty.  The community swimming pool was filled in and made into a parking lot.  There were no bikes in the streets, no basketball goals, no hop-scotch grids drawn on the street with chalk.   There were no children – just grandparents.  For years all was quiet and still.

I have not lived on Camille Street since I left for college in 1975. But, my dreams are filled with adventures played out on the streets of our small neighborhood.  My best memories are of Ricky, Charlotte, Kathy, Mikie.  Of smelling chicken frying and knowing it was Monday because that was fried chicken day at our house.  Of making a mud pie topped with shaving cream frosting for Ricky when he had measles.  Of lying under the stars on a homemade quilt giggling about boys with Charlotte.  Of the “talent shows” we had on our front porch.  Of my mama pulling her car into the grass so we could roller skate on the driveway.  Of so many Christmas mornings when Ricky would be the first one up – around 4 am – and scamper across the street to see what was under our tree.

I still dream of the fun we had, the lessons we learned, the plans we made and the safety and love we all felt.

Last week I was going to my mother’s house – a house she has called home for more than 45 years – and I noticed as I turned onto Camille Street, a group of little boys throwing a baseball to each other in the street.  A little further down the street, there was a squad of cheerleader-want-to-be’s practicing their chats in someone’s front yard.  I dodged a couple of bikes left on the curb and a basketball goal dragged to the street for practice.  Camille Street was alive with the beginning of summer.

It’s a new day in our neighborhood. Old houses are being repainted and refurbished. New mamas are pushing new strollers down old streets.  New games are being played under the old trees.  A new generation is growing, learning, and living on Camille Street.  If I could, I would tell this new generation to stay on Camille – and in childhood – as long as possible.  Don’t be so eager to get out into the world.  There is nothing safer, more comforting, and more special than growing up in a small Southern town with friends you will keep for life.

When this new generation leaves Camille Street – and they will leave without a backward glance, just like we did – they, too, will dream of lazy summer days and humid, fun-filled nights.  They will dream of home.   Just like we do.