Edgelea Drive

I worked on this idea in 2021 and even have a snatch of text from 2019, but it's had a hard time ripening into a proper song.

My childhood is clearly divided into two parts, because we lived in the "green house" on Edgelea Drive until I started school and then moved to the house my father's parents had lived in on Ramsey Avenue, 6 long blocks away, so I only saw my old friends if they were in the same class at Mary B. Sharpe school. So learning adult things was phase II and phase I was set in an entirely different place. Back on Edgelea my Mom thought I had enough friends right there that she didn't put me in kindergarten as she did my sibs.

We were at that time possibly the only house on Edgelea Drive, so next to us was a huge pile of dirt left from the construction site and behind us farmers' fields full of snakes. Even the names I recall from there sound like they were from a different time, or from the ancient Little Rascals comedy about kids. Who do you know now who is named Biffy or R.C. or Red or Storm or Billie (as a girl)? Today Edgelea Drive has been built to an end, curving around through what used to be those fields. I see that even our next door neighbors actually lived on Clinton Avenue, but to me all of it will always be Edgelea Drive. The factual Edgelea Drive has grown to 38 houses by now! I'm mildly curious about the changes that have taken place since then, but my Edgelea Drive will always be as it was in 1957-1962. Oh, and as soon as we moved away, my memories became the only way back, because the new owners painted the "green house" white and added a second story to it!

I talked briefly with my Mom about the song and those times, especially when it occurred to me that many of my special memories have to do with how different Dad was back then - whereas she was making the whole thing run. Her only comment at the time was "That was fun." It's a shame she didn't at least get to hear it before her death in December 2022.

Click here for audio only:

Edgelea Drive
Think of a childhood memory
With colors in a magic blur 
Figures from a children's picture book
Yeah, that's where the wild things were.

Let your eyes unfocus  
And let your mind drift free
Turn back into a child of three
And come back to that place with me

Chorus:
The Edgelea Drive of my childhood doesn't exist today
The magic it had till '62 has long since gone away
Edgelea Drive was a work in progress, progress I don't want to know
I'll keep my magical Edgelea Drive inside my head aglow

Dad made us a cave to hide in
When the snow piled as high as our chins.
That this was a once-in-your-life event
I never could be convinced.

You might see a bare body streak past you
Was that Pow Wow the Indian Girl?
Clothing was an awful nuisance
Li'l sis would rather unfurl

I remember Billy Ramsey 
Lived on Edgelea Drive like me
The only girl I ever knew 
Who shared a name with me

Billy Ramsey, where are you today?
I don't want to know
You'll always be there in my Edgelea
Forever on the go

[Chorus]

Storm wasn't a weather front then
She lived on Edgelea too.
Biffy and RC, though little rascals, 
Lived there -- and not on the tube.

We ranged the fields of snakes and milkweed
Found the secret launching pad
Used by some mysterious Big Kids
Or maybe it was my Dad

[Sung with melody of the chorus:]
Billy Ramsey is a magical figure 
From those magical years of my distant past
When men were called Red who are long since dead
Your childhood's not meant to last

Twenty other kids
Lived twenty other lives
So I'm sure there are twenty
Other Edgelea Drives

[Chorus]