19941 FERNGLEN DRIVE
Thinking back to those hot Summers between nineteen seventy two
And nineteen seventy seven in Yorba Linda, I see from my mind great times.
Parents at work just as were most every house when I was a kid,
My stepsisters Barbara and Denise would stay with us for the Summer.
Mornings were always good as we would sleep in if we wanted, I recall,
There we were, nine kids in the house running crazy, laughing, maybe fighting.
Everyone doing different things, of course, we had better have cleaning done,
We spent days swimming in the pool, the girls, my sisters Cheryl, Kathy, and Tammy
Were doing their own things, Kathy and Barbara probably hiding smoking cigarettes.
I use to hide a tape recorder under Kathy’s bed until they left and then listen for facts,
They would say all sorts of things, blackmail, something to hold over their heads.
Tammy was and still is the youngest, for being so young she learned to be wild,
She had no choice but to learn to fight back with eight others picking on her.
Gary was the oldest and as my parents said! he was in charge and supposed to watch us,
Well? he gave us lots of advice to get ourselves into trouble, many of his ideas.
He was my older brother and although we would fight at times if anyone bothered
Me he was around to kick their ass because that’s the way he was and family should be.
He went to Bernardo, and Esperanza high school, ran track and partied,
Fernglen drive was a street I loved living on and sure will always remember.
My brother Leon liked to hang out with his best friend Tony Ingalls, they were pals,
Leon at that time thought Gary was the greatest, he would try hanging around him.
My sister Valerie was the second youngest whom to me was much different than the rest,
She liked swimming and like everyone else played outside, she didn’t seem as loud.
She played hide and seek and other games in the dark of night with the rest of us,
Valerie sure didn’t find trouble the way some of us did, a good person with the same smile to this say.
We were kids, a family living in Yorba Linda back in the seventies on Fernglen Drive,
Messing around on the weekends, out in the hills before they were destroyed by greed.
Imaginations used before so much technology took away the dreaming minds of a child,
Active back in those days were children, chasing the sun till the day was done, after dark.
Whatever we believe, with our parents if to this day we disagree or did not see eye to eye,
I think we all owe them a world of thanks for the lives we had back then even with childhood scars.
Just as they could never be perfect it stands that for certain neither were we, remember a time,
Why is it that we can only go back, visit in our minds our yesterday, why can’t we walk backward.
A reason from god, one of his great mysteries, perhaps we were supposed to have understood then,
While we were running and playing as children we weren’t looking for the future or thinking we
We were going to lose the days as we now stand in the future and those days lost are in the past.
Like leaves we are scattered in the wind, we travel a road we choose, distance in miles or in thought,
Always in my thinking mind, my family close by or far away, I wait and watch to see them another day.
Keith Garrett
