Barbara Lane runs straight downhill from Rt. 370 (which we called the Main Road) at the crest of the hill to the river nearly a mile below, and it split the Beckley's long narrow property into building lots on either side. My theory is that this land was unsuitable for farming by the large Melvin farm that borders it to the east and most likely once owned it. At the lower end of Middle Barbara Lane the Melvin farm still owned the land right up to the road, so there weren't any lots on that east side. The lots on the west side of Barbara Lane bordered what was once a farm owned by an old retired farmer. The fields were fallow, treeless for the most part, and overgrown with native weeds and grasses

At the time my father installed our trailer, "Upper" Barbara Lane was already populated with houses built around the 30s & 1940s. There were two other Beckley brothers in the Upper part, and about 15 families in all. Ours was the first house settled on the Middle part, which was raw land with a dirt road starting at a steep change in the slope of the road on the uphill side of our lot. This natural dividing line defined "Upper", developed and settled conventional housing from "Middle", pioneering trailers and subsequent improvements of varying quality. Some of the "Lower Laners" never progressed out of their trailer.

Much of this I covered in Dad Builds Our House, but here I make the distinction between what I call Upper, Middle and Lower Barbara Lane because the distinction was important in how I lived in the time I spent there . The division was not only physical, it also affected neighborhood relationships, although no one ever actually referred to them as "Upper", etc..   I'm labelling them that way to better explain things

There was almost no interaction between "Upper" kids and "Middle" kids. I wouldn't be surprised if some of the adult "Uppers" considered the "Lowers" to be below them on the social scale, because the Lowers actually were lower on the socio-economic scale.       Our houses were not as nice.  We were not as well off.  The Uppers were well established families    My father had a relatively good factory job, but there were 5 of us kids, and eventually 8. The "Uppers" had one or two kids, or none. Our "Lower" neighbors didn't all have jobs as good as my Dad's. In that respect I felt lucky. I baby sat or several Lower families, and I saw how they lived. It was by no means squalor or poverty, but for some it was on the edge.

Moving from The Old Home was a big change for me, as moving is for any child. From our rural farm without any "next door" neighbors to a new place with some new neighbors close by, but separated by class, by age, and by the physical boundary of Viau's woods, Mac's equipment yard, and the drop in the road.

I often think about the way our unique neighborhood evolved. It was an unusual neighborhood, quite unlike anything experienced by people I have known. We lived on a dead-end street, a dirt road, with the "back end" of big farms on either side, at the bottom of which was a dense, impenetrable floodplain forest, and a mighty river, the Seneca. We were surrounded on three sides by the river forest, by other different kinds of forest, by grassy meadows with waist-high weeds, swamps, abandoned fruit and berry orchards from a century ago, a pond, a gravel pit, a sand pit. From our place on the hill it opened up like a panorama of nature. We could see the land on the far side of the river, and a railroad trestle bridge where short trains came each day like clockwork. Our horizons were the crests of other glacial hills miles away to the south and west, over which the sun would set behind silhouettes of forest that became as familiar as our own yard.

Into this place families came, and like us many started with a trailer and built sheds to expand their living space, or not, or used the trailer as we did as a base camp to build a permanent home. In general the lots were filled in order going down the hill, but there were a few empty lots in between that were filled later. I watched our home place grow and evolve with the new additions, and with the changes of people arriving and leaving and being born and growing up. This place was so new that as long as I lived there, as long as I can recall, only one person died.

My first experiences here with my two brothers on Barbara Lane were exploring the woods and fields close by, especially the woods right next to our trailer. We were the first to move to the Middle part of Barbara Lane, so as yet there weren't any other children on our part of the road.

To explain how our special little world evolved from the standpoint of identifying the players, the sequence of their arrivals and departures, I have constructed A Map of the Middle. The numbers indicate chronological sequence, as far as I can remember, and their placement shows where they lived.

#1 is our trailer, the first family on "Middle" Barbara Lane.

Soon there were other families moving in below us on Barbara Lane, and there were new kids with whom to play. Some of the families had older kids with whom we never played, some had much yonger kids with whom my sisters might have played. Among the younger kids I was the oldest, and later became something of a leader I suppose.

2. Dad Builds Our House

3. Down the hill were the Fords, who moved in right after we came to the trailer. Two kids, a high school girl and a son, Jimmy a few years older than me Mr. "Red" Ford ran a garage. Like my Dad, the Fords had two lots, one with a trailer and the other closest to us where he put a metal garage for working on cars. The Ford girl got married and had two kids and moved to the basement of a house they were building.

4. Into our trailer moved the Taillefers from Canada, kids Francine and Dennis (the menace), who was an annoyance but not a bad kid. Dad rented the trailer to them. Francine was a nice little girl and Mr. & Mrs Taillefer were wonderful. They had a heavy French accent. Mr. Taillefer helped Dad build the house. Mrs. Taillefer was always smiling and laughing. Super lady, she went on to own a bar in the next County.

5. Across the street the Winters moved into a trailer which was their permanent home, with later additions. Their two kids Johnny and Bonnie were older. Years later when Johnny was grown up and married he moved in to his own trailer near the bottom of the hill. Mr. Winters had a ham radio setup with the huge antenna on top of a tower and one time I visited his radio shack, dark, with calling cards from all over the world.

6. Next door to the Winters', the Petersens moved in to a newly-built house across the street. They had two boys - Dickie, my age, and Russ, Gary's age. They had a lot of toys, and an electric train for Christmas. We played with them occasionally, but they moved away after a couple of years. This was the family that left the guitar behind for a while that we stored for them.

7. Down the road, the Ford girl and her husband and two boys moved into the unfinished basement of a house they were building.

8 When the Petersens moved away my Dad bought their house and he rented it to the Shaner family who moved in, with Robin and Glory-Ann, both a few years younger. Glory-Ann was very close with my sisters, and we boys played with Robin but he was not as rough-and-tumble as we were, but he was always welcome. They had an older sister Janet, 16 or so, who would watch over us when we went swimming in the river in summer and down whose swimsuit top I would peak to get a glimpse of her cleavage.

Mr. Shaner was a well driller who worked with Mr. Al Day, another neighbor. Mrs Shaner was a big woman and liked to chat . She was only one of two or three neighborhood women who ever came to visit my Mom, and she had lots of advice for Mom.   My Mom did not like to gossip.    The Shaners lived in that house for many years, until after I graduated from High School. My Dad charged $50/month rent .

9 Down from the Fords an unknown family started a house but ran out of money, and the empty bare frame sat abandoned for years. Very sad to see. This was where I found a robin's nest with blue eggs which, when I checked back, had hatched into tiny chick. I knew enough to not touch them lest the mother abandon them.

10 Al Day built a house at the bottom of the hill, where Barbara Lane then began a gentle rise until it crested and then dropped down to meet the river. Al was an outdoorsman and got my Dad interested in fishing.   Dad did some serious fishing and wound up buying our first boat

11 The Calkins family lived here, with Eddy and Wendy. They were Marilyn's age. We played with Eddy a lot. I babysat them when I was 10 or so. In 1957 Mr,. Calkins was doing well as a truck driver , the economy was good. He bought a brand new 1957 Chevy - gold, fuel injected, and he and his brother had brand new Harley Davidson motorcycles. Awesome.

12 This little house was home to Mr. Calkins' brother. A few years later a childless couple moved in. Gary worked in the husband's garage in Fulton after HS.

13 Frank Cain and his wife, an elderly couple. Mr. Cain was a handyman. he put a sign up on Rt. 370, which we called "The Main Road". His sign read "Saws Filed and Odd Jobs. Frank Cain". The meaning of the sign always puzzled me. He built a little motor jalopy that he drove up and down the hill sometimies. His wife suffered from cancer.  Years later this lot would have a new trailer and the GIles family moved in

14 The Reinharts moved a trailer in to a scrappy little lot between Mac's and the Winters. Patty, Penny, and Eddy J. Rinehart. And then came a foster kid, Kenny Beals, of whom I will have much to say later. Tragedy would come to this house.

15 Mr. McAllister, a Scotsman, and his wife had a trailer. He was a blacksmith and an ornamental ironworker, with a blacksmith shop and a big bellows. When I was in High School he wanted me to be his apprentice, but I was going to leave for college

16 Next door to the Shaners the Badgeleys built a house  They had little kids whom I would baby sit in a few years when I was 10 or 11. They built a nice big house with an above-ground basement. Mr. Badgeley had tattoos from the Korean War.

17 The Day's moved, and the Jensen family moved in from Michigan. Ralph and Shirley. Bill, Butch. Mark, Sally, Janice. In age roughly corresponding to me, Gary, Marilyn, Lorraine, and Pamela. The Jensen family became my second home growing up. Ralph was a well driller and worked with Mr. Shaner for the Osier well drilling company who had a yard on the Main Road.

The Jensen's were at a low point on the hill, from which, continuing south the road began a gentle rise until it reached a crest just beyond the Secor's, at which the road fell off steeply to the river, where we had our Camp.

18 Down from the abandoned house frame a different family named Petersen brought a trailer. No relation to the Petersens who had already moved away. Mr. Petersen was a single Dad with two kids, Dicky Petersen (again, but a different kid) and his 16 year-old sister. , who was a hottie. She had a boyfriend, but I hung out at their house constantly when I was about 14. I got along well with Dicky and I flirted endlessly with his sister. They had some modeling gel with which I fashioned a fairly accurate male genitalia, which everyone found hilarious, including her father, which Dicky's sister told me later. Yikes, I was glad he had a sense of humor. This Petersen family only stayed a few years, and then a relation, another Petersen family, moved into their trailer. Their kids were much younger and became fast friends with my younger sisters.

Several vacant lots intervened on this side of the road, across from the gravel pit and the pond, and finally

19 The Secors, with Brenda and Bruce, were the end of the line.   Apparently Mr. Secor wanted isolation. They lived so far away and isolated, we rarely played with them.  At the crest of a rise in the road, their house marked the end of "Middle" and the beginning of "Lower" Barbara Lane

Several lots filled in later.

20 This lot remained vacant for years until Buddy Holton, the oldest son of the Holton's (to whom I refer in Hurricane Hazel) brought a trailer and set up housekeeping. Buddy was a pleasant neighbor but his kids were way too young for us to play with. This lot was the last one on that side of Barbara Lane, downhill from which was all Melvin's farm

21 Johnny Winters put a trailer in after he graduated from High school & was married. He raised a family here.

22 Melvin's farm is bordered by a long barbed wire fence that ran all the way down the hill to the river. Mr. Melvin cleared a big field which made a rough pasture for his young heifers. This took out a large patch of forest in which we had played for a few years. Then came the gravel Pit and the Pond that Mac dug in Hurricane Hazel. and then a thick forest, and then another, better pasture for his milk cows.

The evolution of "Middle " Barbara Lane began from our trailer lot and progressed down the hill, with a few that didn't quite fit the pattern.    Maybe because some of the lots were less desirable.  Swampy, or  sloped too much.

Now that the players are assembled, in Part II I will share some memories of growing up in our special  place.