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2004-11-09 - 5:55 p.m.

I was walking Helena the other night (Because I do that.. I walk around towns at night) and I started crying because I wanted some rhubarb pie.

Five houses ago was the most perfect time of my life. This was before I moved to Idaho to live with my dad. This was when I had friends who would randomly show up to say "let's play!". It was on a street called Townley Circle. Circles are the most friendly of places to grow up. I went back last year, just to see how the old neighborhood was doing, and it was small. It really seemed much bigger when I was seven.

We had a park in the middle of our circle, and we played kick the can and hide-and-go-seek, and moms could look out their doors (back or front, depending on how your house faced) and usually see at least one of us kids out there. My basement wasn't finished, but that is where we had our computers. This was the late 80's so computers back then were stellar beyond belief, I wish I still had one.

This was back when I loved my bike, and loved riding it. I learned how to go backwards on rollerblades by moving my feet like a lemon. I got my impeccable sense of balance from walking the fence between my house and the park. I was lucky, and my house was one of the four that surrounded the park. Directly across the park from me was some guy who I don't remember that much about, but I do remember that I thought he was awfully nice and smart. Behind my house, with our backyards touching, was some old people with no kids. At least no kids of our age. They let their backyard get overgrown, and one day I ran back there to get a ball and it was the scariest moments of my young life.

There was a fence that ran by the curviest part of our street, parallel the cross-street, if you understand that, and across it was a trailer park. We had a hole in the fence that was covered up by a swinging board, it was everything you see in the all-american childhood movies. We would go over there (though our parents forbid it) and walk (run, mainly) past the trailer park to the church-school next to it, to play on their playground, because our park, though fun, didn't have much in the way of playground equipment. The church-school however had one of those giant tire-pile-climbing-things, and one of those whirli-things that you get on and have your friends run around spinning.. you know..?

In my back yard we had a compost heap, and right next to the porch my mom had a rhubarb plant. She used to make pies with it, or just give it to us kids to eat plain. I haven't tasted it since I moved away in the middle of third grade.. and that is why I wanted it tonight.

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rhubarb