Schuyler Avenue Storms and the Role of Place in Fiction

The oldest memory I have of my hometown has to do with a breezy August day, the threat of a storm, and an abandoned Big Wheel. We had gathered- the kids of Schuyler Avenue: the Dispensa brothers, Nick, Chris, and Mike, Kenny Roberts, Dawn Sturgess, Susie Domanico- the regulars, mostly older kids, to discuss the incoming storm. We met midway down the street, which seemed like miles for me at five years old. I had ridden my Big Wheel down and had left it with the other bikes as we confabbed, standing in a loose circle, listening to the bigger kids talk and thinking they were very cool. I remember the sun being really bright, and the wind being unnaturally strong for August, the kind of wind that usually announced the coming of a thunderstorm.

We talked the fervent talk of kids, who can remember specifics? I remember that when we all got together it was the older girls who led us in talk, and Nick, the oldest boy, who would flirt with them and joke right back. Nick was always our leader, a fledgling bodybuilder, tough guy, bass player, and defender of our street’s pride when kids from Van Buren Drive or Pulver Avenue would stir up trouble. On that day, though, the talk was meteorological. No petty squabbles, no innocent flirting, just speculation about the severity of the storm coming in- that it would probably be a tornado. I remember lots of nervous glances to the sky, lots of guesses as to the amount of damage that would occur. The clouds were that weird shade of gray green. It was oppressively hot. Would it rip up the street? Just my house? Who knew?

So I did what all five year olds would do in the face of impending annihilation: I turned tail and ran home. As fast as I could, no kidding. I even left the Big Wheel behind, leaving it for my father to go get later. In a panic, I curled up on our couch and peered out the window, anxious and afraid. It took my folks a long time to talk me off the ledge and get me prepared for what was sure to be humdinger of a thunderstorm. And we waited.

[perfectpullquote align=”full” bordertop=”false” cite=”” link=”” color=”#ffd216″ class=”” size=”32″]So I did what all five year olds would do in the face of impending annihilation: I turned tail and ran home.[/perfectpullquote]

And then the storm passed. Nary a drop of rain or bolt of lightning that day. Just the pall of the day that hung there in the sticky air for what seemed like ages. No rain, but the almost forty-five year old memory has stuck, wedged in my brain file with all of the other Schuyler Avenue and Ravena memories. It’s kind of nice, really, to have a stock of curated memories that can bring me back to that warm, happy place in a flash (yes, even this terrifying remembrance has, over the years, mellowed into a fuzzy mix of nostalgia and joy). But what’s even more satisfying is that I find, when I go to that place in my head and start to write, that I begin to populate my stories with these places and-while not the real people- shades of the people that I knew growing up. The place has become the building blocks of what I write. Cool.

This is not a new idea by any stretch, and others have written more eloquently about it elsewhere, but it just struck me as something so profound and unique to my experience that I couldn’t resist writing about it. All of my Raven’s Falls stories (Ravena, Raven’s Falls- I know, pretty close) have elements of my hometown and the experiences I had there. And that’s ok, because I suspect that at some level I’m trying to work some things out about my childhood in that small village in southern Albany County. Each time I finish another story I think I’m getting closer, and that’s what makes this such a fun ride.

I was driving to a football game this fall in Ravena. I decided to go the back way, through the back paths and country roads I grew up on. I passed my football coach’s house, the one that I helped work on when he was building it in 1984. I passed the rural park that I worked at for two summers in high school, my first introduction to county work. I passed the homes of countless friends now lost to the twin flows of time and circumstance. I passed my dad’s old farm, now the back nine for the local golf course. It was a splendid mistake, one full of the rich fodder of story stuff, and one I will most certainly capitalize on.

It is like Richard Wilbur states in “The Writer,” without sounding too dramatic, “It is always a matter, my darling/ Of life or death, as I had forgotten…” and it is. Remembering, for me, is the tie that binds. Now back to the writing.