Lanewood Lads

My street Lanewood Circle is not a circle at all, it just bends a bit and dead ends. It was on this small segment that comprised our neighborhood. I didn't live out my childhood there, since I moved to the suburbs when I began junior high school, but it became my home throughout teenage wasteland and home summers from college.
I discovered a number of guys lived up and down the Circle, as we all went to school together. I'd like to refer to us as the Lanewood lads: me, sandy-haired smiling Harry Stubbs, who was one heck of a guy, calculating and aloof Gary P. Wilkerson, tough talking Steve Duncan (who actually lived on Barnes Street around the corner, but bestowed with blessings as a pal), and the marvelous Mack "Mackie" Webb, a real character study!  
We also included the sons of the mysterious Quintals family, whose father was Hawaiian. I can't for my life remember their names and always suspiciously suspected their dad smuggled goods into the country for a living. I think one of the parents still lives there in that same house to this day. The only other person who is still around is Carla Hinkle's mother on Barnes up a few houses from where Steve used to live. Other than that, the lads  have all moved out and on and the neighborhood has changed a lot driving down it today. The street is shadier from the trees having grown and canopied. The now 50-year old wooden houses have taken on the personality of the newer owners. At least they take pride in the homes and the yards are not down to the dirt with chained dogs and filled with car bodies up on blocks. But, I digress...
I remember summer breaks from school and fall time mostly...we rode bikes around and up to Lochwood Shopping Center in the dead heat, moved from cool house to house, and explored the wooded creeks nearby that ran as a greenbelt through the richer homes closer to the junior high school. At Harry's house, we'd listen to Beach Boy's albums on the phonograph and take turns trying on his father's war souvenir, an official gray World War II German uniform tunic. Achtung! Of course, we brought our homemade skateboards for gang competition on the Quintal's large rounded back patio porch. I kept my eye out for any contraband. 
Harry and I were known to frequent the other Gary on Lanewood, Gary P. Wilkerson. His small bedroom became the canvas for wild wrestling sessions and encounters with that little weird dog of his, who was always interested in a loose leg. We would time-out and Gary would relieve us with ice-cold Coca Colas from the fridge out in their garage.
When school began again and the ember months ushered in cooler weather, we guys gathered like leaves on a windy afternoon together to play touch football, which really resembled a bad rugby game. We played on the large grassy lot aside my house and the corner one. Steve Duncan always wanted someone to give him the ball, so we obliged him and he got creamed! Harry (at the time) was smaller and a real rocket! I liked to play quarterback or end and go long for a pass. In this stadium, great gridiron games ground to a halt only at dark when we could not see the ball anymore.
This was the time before Don Meredith and Howard Cosell Monday Night Football, so we replayed the Sunday AFL/NFL professional football games, each of us becoming a team in himself. These one-on-one games, grinding smear football contests Mack Webb held on his front yard up the street. That guy would honestly laugh like he enjoyed putting a hit on you or piled in for a fumble. If I didn't know Mackie better, I'd swear him psychotic! But, I saw the real side of a lonely last child of older parents longing for attention. He was quite creative and well-versed in the music of that day. He and I played Iron Butterfly, Beatles albums, and King Crimson stuff in his room, pretending to be the new FM dj's emerging at the time; especially on New Years Night. Why, he was the first of us to get an electric guitar and learn to play. Later, Harry Stubbs took it to an all-time level to became a professional musician and still is a big Blues composer/player on the Memphis and Texas music scene.
At first meeting-impression, I was afraid of Steve Duncan. Maybe he was somewhat jealous of me with regard to school? I finally figured it was a bluff on his part--this tough talk, bragging, and intimidation he tried. The rest of us decided just to give him the ball and none of the other attention he craved and that helped to humble him! I think he wanted so much to belong and decided to accept us as we were--we, him as he was.  I remember now the quality of time several of us spent under the corner street light long after curfew, talking about important teenage things. I heard Steve Duncan is back in prison, having violated his parole.
Trouble has followed the best of us, I bet, as that is part of the pains of maturing. My most formidable demons then might have been just struggling with self-esteem. Living and looking out my front room onto Lanewood all those years like I did, despite my earlier close friends and encounters, I became more alienated and alone. I wondered if anyone cared or whether I would ever "measure up" to my peers. Yet, finally she alone was able to dispel this personal withdrawal when with her appearing, she became for me every imagined idea I had of her being and more as affection realized.

Epilogue: But all of Lanewood lads had the privilege of growing up together for that part of our lives. We shared lots of laughs and some heartaches for sure. I regret, unfortunately, we kind of went our own individual ways during high school, pursuing other interests...even Mackie! Like Harry recently wrote me, when I was able to reconnect with him after all these years, about our time growing up together being without complaint and "just like it was suppose to be."